LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap. _ Copyright No. 

Shelf^S^_5£n 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



f < 




JOHN SELDEN. 



JOHN SELDEN 



AND 



HIS TABLE-TALK 

/ 

By ROBERT WATERS 

Author of "Shakespeare as Portrayed by Himself," 
*' Intellectual Pursuits," etc. 



" The Table-Talk of Selden is worth all the Ana of the Continent." 
— Hallam. 

" There is more weighty bullion sense in this book [Selden's Table- 
Talk] than I ever found in the same number of pages of any unin- 
spired writer," — Coleridge. 




NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS 
CINCINNATI : CURTS & JENNINGS 







l^qto 



45287 



Copyright by 

EATON & MAINS, 

J899. 

TWO COPIES RECEIVED, 




SECOND COPY, 



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PREFACE 



To the younger class of readers at the 
present day John Selden is Httle more than 
a name. He is often spoken of, frequently 
quoted, but known to few. Like his great 
contemporary, Lord Bacon, for one that has 
read 'his w^orks a thousand have heard of his 
name. And precisely as Bacon is now 
known to most readers chiefly by his small 
volume of Essays, on w^hich he set least 
store, so is John Selden known, to those who 
read at all, by the short record of his Table- 
Talk^ of which he himself knew nothing. 
It not unfrequently happens that an author's 
fame rests chiefly on that work, or that part 
of his work, of which he himself thought 
little. 

Now, as I feel convinced that John Sel- 
den, both as man and wTiter, ought to be 
better known, and that this knowledge is 
of the best and noblest, I have prepared this 
little work for those who know him only by 
name, or those who have no knowledge at all 
of him. As he lived and acted in an eventful 
period, and as his Table-Talk is one of 
those books which may be termed "the pre- 



Preface 

cious lifeblood of a master spirit," no man 
who wishes to know "the best that has been 
thought and said in the world" ought to be 
ignorant of it. 

It is worth something to be able to listen 
to the table talk of a great man. Selden's 
talk, much of it, contains diamonds of 
thought set in the pure gold of common 
sense. And it will go hard if a knowledge 
of this man's life and character, together 
with his Talk, does not make a deep impres- 
sion on the reader; it will go hard if some of 
these wise sayings and shrewd observations 
on men and events do not stick to him 
through life, and form a guide to action in 
those difficult and dangerous situations in 
which every man, more or less frequently, 
finds himself placed. I will guarantee that 
he who carefully peruses Selden's Table- 
Talk will lay it down a wiser* man than 
when he took it up. 

So much for Selden. What the writer 
has added is only subsidiary and explana- 
tory. The chapter on Table-Talk Books and 
that on Selden's Career are simply aids to a 
fuller comprehension and larger enjoyment 
of the Table-Talk ; and when this has been 
perused, the account of the wise old states- 
man's Closing Years will, it is hoped, cause 



Preface 

the reader to feel a personal, nay, an affec- 
tionate interest in the man himself. 

As to the Table-Talk, nothing except 
a few passages on ecclesiastical matters, 
which are of little or no interest to modern 
readers, is omitted; so that the whole, as it 
stands, will, it is presumed, afford the reader 
a fair knowledge of the career, character, 
and conversation of this old English worthy, 
who, "though dead, yet speaketh," and who 
ought still to be listened to, especially by the 
descendants or the members of that race to 

which he himself belonged. 
5 



CONTENTS 



I. Some Account of Bygone Table-Talk 

Books o . . . . 9 

II. The Career of John Selden - • - 35 

III. Origin of the Table-Talk — Secret of 

its Popularity 56 

IV. The Table-Talk, with some Explana- 
tory Notes 71 

V. Concluding Remarks — Closing Years 

of Mr. Selden's Life 215 



JOHN SELDEN 

AND 

HIS TABLE-TALK. 

I 

Some Account of Bygone Table-Talk 
Books 

It is curious to observe what queer and 
mysterious books were most popular, among 
those who read books at all, in the sixteenth 
and seventeenth centuries. I call them queer 
and mysterious because they dealt largely in 
the supernatural and the inexplicable ; in the 
workings of fiends, monsters, demons, sor- 
cerers, magicians, priests, and prophets ; and 
so frequently was this the case, that one can- 
not help thinking the people of those times 
regarded the common affairs of life as un- 
worthy of literary record. Yet I have no 
doubt these books were, for the readers of 
their time, mind-furnishing books ; for they 
seem to have been read chiefly by those who 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

wished to acquire matter for conversation 
or table talk, and doubtless such books af- 
forded what they sought, and gave rise to 
much speculation among the fireside groups 
and other gatherings of those days. 

Now, as those who read books with that 
view to-day are certainly not the least in- 
telligent or the least cultured among our 
people, I imagine those early readers could 
not have ranked among the inferior thinkers 
and talkers of their time. They read and 
talked of those things which were interesting 
to them, precisely as we do at the present 
day ; and though they doubtless discussed the 
mysterious contents of their books with a 
certain awe and reverence peculiar to their 
day, it is quite likely that some bold thinker 
would now and then pronounce a daring 
criticism or venture a shrewd conjecture on 
some of their contents, which would set the 
others a-thinking, and thus conduce to the 
general enlightenment of the group. For 
as those books that stir thought and create 
discussion are reckoned among the prime 
factors in the education of a people, it is fair 
to presume that these ghostly books of the 
early ages served, in this respect, a useful 
purpose among the people. 

Among the monks, and ecclesiastics gen- 

10 



Bygone Tx\ble-Talk Books 

erally, works of a pious and devotional char- 
acter were, of course, most common; but 
among laymen the most popular books con- 
sisted of collections of signs and wonders; 
of strange predictions and mysterious occur- 
rences; of warnings, dreams, omens, and 
mysteries; of jests, riddles, witticisms, and 
anecdotes ; of ballads, songs, and sonnets ; of 
warlike deeds and heroic exploits (often 
against legendary or mythical personages), 
and of wild tales of love and adventure. In 
short, they w^ere such books as contained en- 
tertaining and inspiring matter for fireside 
stories and table talk generally. 

The history of every people in the early 
ages, which may be termed the infancy of 
the human race, is characterized by the rude 
superstition which attributes life and power 
to material things ; and thus we see that not 
only the winds and waves, the sun and the 
moon, but even stocks and stones were sup- 
posed to be at times animated and active for 
good or ill, and more or less connected with 
the weal or woe of human existence. This 
belief, on w^hich so many of the ancient 
myths and legends are founded, was not en- 
tirely eradicated, at least among the lower 
orders, even up to the time of the Reforma- 
tion. Indeed, we may still see remnants of it ; 



II 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

for when an ignorant man turns with anger 
or indignation on some inanimate object 
that has annoyed him, and punishes it as if 
it were a living thing, he displays nothing 
but a remnant of the old superstition. 

Shakespeare, whose dramas illustrate so 
much in the habits and customs of bygone 
ages, gives in the Merry Wives of Windsor 
a good example of the kind of books used 
by certain classes in his time. Songs and 
sonnets, rhymes and riddles seem to have 
formed a chief factor in the art of love-mak- 
ing — a most difficult art indeed — and this is 
shown in Slender's first meeting with Mis- 
tress Anne Page. She is about to come in to 
invite him to dinner, when he, all anxiety as 
to what he shall say to her, thus unburdens 
his mind : 

''Slender: I had rather than forty shil- 
lings I had my Book of Songs and Sonnets 
here. [Enter Simple.] How now. Simple ! 
Where have you been ? I must wait on my- 
self, must I ? You have not the Book of Rid- 
dles about you, have you ? 

''Simple: Book of Riddles! Why, did 
you not lend it to Alice Shortcake upon All- 
hallowmas last, a fortnight afore Michael- 
mas?" 

Poor Slender! had he had the Book of 

12 



Bygone Table-Talk Books 

Riddles or the Book of Songs and Sonnets 
with him, he might have said such nice things 
to Mistress Anne Page as would have won 
her heart at once; while now he was left 
helpless, his own empty brain furnishing 
him with nothing suitable for such a delicate 
occasion. By the way, is it not even now 
chiefly among children and people of weak 
mental caliber that we find riddles and co- 
nundrums so popular, forming, in fact, the 
chief or most interesting topic of their con- 
versation ? 

Some of these early books were, in their 
comprehensiveness, even more colossal than 
the encyclopedias of our own day. Mr. 
Charles Knight, in his Essay on Table-Talk, 
enumerates a score of such books, with their 
quaint and curious titles, not only in Eng- 
lish^ but in French, Italian, and Latin. I 
shall give the reader the title of one of these 
— a huge work in two folio volumes, printed 
at Frankfort-on-the-Main in the year 1600, 
and, like most books in that age, written in 
Latin— which will give him a vivid concep- 
tion of what they contained : 

''Memorable and Recondite Readings, by 

John Wolf : a Book rich and rare, dug out of 

the Hidden Depths of Sacred Scripture and 

Venerable Antiquity, and highly embellished 

13 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

with whatever is most Worthy in Allegory, 
in Tropology, in Allusion, Anagogic, Hiero- 
glyphic. Symbolic, Iconographic, and Myth- 
ologic; in the Orphic Meanings; in In- 
scriptions and Emblems; in the Apoph- 
thegms of Great Men ; in Proverbs, Parables, 
and Moral Maxims; in Stories Sacred and 
Profane; and in other Inventions of the 
Ingenious; in Compendious Accounts of 
Chronology, of Christian Doctrine, of Here- 
sies, of Schisms, of Persecutions; of Em- 
perors and Popes, and of other learned and 
illustrious Persons, together with their Acts 
and Deeds; as likewise of the Decrees of 
Councils and Synods, in Events and in 
Epochs" — and so on for about forty lines 
more, offering rich store of matter about 
''Doctors of the Church, Poets, Politi- 
cians, Philosophers, and Historians;" about 
''Prophecies, Vows, Omens, Mysteries, Mira- 
cles, Visions, Antiquities;" and winding up 
with a vast deal of information about "Mon- 
uments, Testimonies, Examples of Virtues, 
of Vices, and of Abuses;" with "S^ore of 
Types, Pictures, and Images;" and, more- 
over, with "all the most frightful Signs, 
Shows, Wonders, Monstrosities, and Por- 
tents of Heaven and Earth !" 

No wonder the author of this tremendous 
14 



Bygone Table-Talk Books 

work expired before he had completed it — 
in fact it would seem to be enough to cause 
the death of half a dozen ordinary men — 
and thus the poor author was deprived of 
the happiness he had anticipated from the 
publication and reputation of his magnum 
opus. Dr. Johnson's single-handed produc- 
tion of his English Dictionary in seven years 
was nothing to it. Some years after the 
death of the author, however, this giant 
work came out, and there was a second edi- 
tion in 1 67 1 — a high compliment in those 
days, for there were no stereotype plates at 
that time — and probably a third and a fourth 
edition followed in the next century. The 
work is not only a monument of the author's 
patience, but a striking example of German 
perseverance and painstaking labor gener- 
ally. 

Surely a book-lover, when he had once 
got his eye on this all-embracing work, could 
hardly have failed to buy a copy, even if he 
were obliged to sell his coat to do so ! And 
when he had got it, he must — believing, as 
he did, the whole of it to be gospel truth — 
have perused its marvelous contents with 
rare enjoyment, combined with wonder and 
awe, and regarded the author as a miracle 
of genius and learning. Like Goldsmith's 
3 15 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

schoolmaster's friends, he must have mar- 
veled 

" That one small head could carry all he knew ! " 

Ah, yes; men got more out of a book in 
those days than we do now — and indeed the 
author put more into it than he does now ! 

Another of these books, one which was 

for centuries the prime source of literary and 

social entertainment among the better class 

of people, not only in England, but on the 

Continent, is the work entitled Gesta Ro- 

manorum, or Deeds of the Romans. From 

this work, of which the origin and the author 

are unknown, but which was probably the 

work of several hands, many English poets, 

notably Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare, 

derived many of the plots and incidents of 

their poems and dramas; for it contains a 

large number of legendary and Oriental 

tales, of fictitious narratives drawn from 

Arabian literature, and of tales from various 

traditionary sources; and to every tale, in 

order to make it fit for Christian readers, a 

moral is attached. But indeed, in spite of 

the moral, many of the tales in the Gesta 

Romanorum are unfit for either Christian 

or pagan to read. Here, however, you may 

find the original story of Shylock and his 
i6 



Bygone Table-Talk Books 

pound of flesh; of Portia and the caskets 
(how deftly Shakespeare has woven both 
stories into one drama !) ; of the Hermit and 
the Angel; of the Three Black Crows; and 
of various other well-known stories, which 
our modern English and American poets 
have worked up in such fine form. 

It is a remarkable fact that many, perhaps 
most, of our best epic and dramatic poems 
are founded on events that occurred a thou- 
sand years ago, among a foreign people in a 
far-off land; and the reason of this is not 
because 

" Distance lends enchantment to the view," 

but because everything touching or thrilling 
in human experience, no matter how long 
ago or among what race it has happened, 
still holds mankind spellbound, still retains 
an absorbing, fascinating interest for the 
average man, and still moves him to sym- 
pathy or admiration. Shakespeare, who 
seems to have known everything, well ex- 
emplifies this fact in his admirable dramas, 
nearly all of which are founded upon ancient 
stories, legendary or historic, drawn from 
sources such as I have just mentioned. 

Then came, in the seventeenth and eight- 
eenth centuries, those countless volumes of 
17 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

Ana for which there was such a rage in 
France and Italy in the last century. The 
first of these books was a volume containing 
the Table Talk, the Noted Sayings, and the 
most interesting Incidents in the life of 
Joseph Justus Scaliger, the famous French 
scholar, professor, and author. Scaliger, 
who numbered among his friends the most 
illustrious scholars of his time, and who is 
noted for his arrogance and vanity as well as 
for his learning, was born in 1540, and died 
in 1609. He is also well known for the 
severity with w^iich, in his writings, he at- 
tacked his opponents, having enriched the 
vocabulary of learned abuse to an extent 
almost unknown before. This book about 
him and his sayings, published in 1666, was 
entitled Scaligerana, and had such an enor- 
mous sale that it was speedily followed by 
others of a similar character. These were 
the Perroniana, the Thuana, the St. Evre- 
moniana, the Huetiana, and so on. Like 
most imitations, however, these were infe- 
rior to the original, being hastily and poorly 
put together, and containing much that was 
spurious or irrelevant. 

Yet these collections of anecdotes about 
eminent men, with scraps of their conversa- 
tion and some of their noted sayings, be- 
18 



Bygone Table-Talk Books 

came the rage of the reading pubHc in the 
last century, and seem, as Mr. Knight says, 
"to have taken the vulgar taste of that age 
as we have seen the novels of fashionable life 
take that of ours." Probably the attraction 
in both instances was of a similar nature; 
for the novels of fashionable life are sup- 
posed to reveal the inner life of fashionable 
or wealthy people, while the Ana were ex- 
pected to do the same for intellectual people. 
The Ana, having served their purpose, have 
all disappeared, and the novels of fashion- 
able life, when they have served their pur- 
pose, will disappear just as certainly. Time, 
the great tester of literary merit, deals with 
the productions of the mind as it does with 
other things : it speedily destroys all those 
that are not of genuine, sterling value, and 
allows only those of pure gold to remain. 

But what Mr. Knight further says of 
these multitudinous volumes of Ana is well 
worth reading and remembering. After 
mentioning the Scaligerana, or the Sayings 
of Scaliger; the Pcrroniana, or the Collo- 
quial Remarks of Cardinal Du Perron; the 
Thumia, or the Sayings of the illustrious his- 
torian De Thou, he continues : 

'These are the original Ana from which all 
the rest have sprung. The rage for this class 
- 19 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

of publications in France lasted for nearly a 
century, and produced in all above a hundred 
collections bearing the characteristic title. 
Peignot, in his Repertory of Special, Curi- 
ous, and Instructive Biographical Notices, 
has given a list of one hundred and nine. 
Among these, however, there are a good 
many which have no claim from their con- 
tents to be reckoned among the true Ana. 
Some are mere miscellaneous collections of 
anecdotes or remarks, neither gathered from 
the conversation of any distinguished per- 
son nor in any way relating to a particular 
individual; others are merely burlesque pro- 
ductions. A few are only collections of ex- 
tracts from the works of the writers after 
whom they are named ; scissors-work, of the 
same kind with those publications called 
Beauties. 

"Of the Ana, properly so called, the char- 
acter even of the best specimen is, that the 
interesting matter in them is mixed up with 
an unusually large proportion of what is 
trivial and worthless. They may be con- 
sidered the lumber room of literature, in 
which articles of all kinds are thrown to- 
gether in confusion, and for the most part 
broken and useless, but which yet contain 
a good many curious things, and some in- 

20 



Bygone Table-Talk Books 

trinsically valuable; the hurried stoppings 
of richly furnished apartments, which a revo- 
lution of fashion or some other accident 
has dismissed to this multifarious repository. 
The variety, at all events, of such a chance- 
collected museum is some compensation for 
its dust and disorder. There is reason to 
believe that in most of the Ana there are 
many things which were never uttered by 
the persons to whom they are attributed, but 
are rather the used-up wit of the editor and 
his friends, or the superfluities of their com- 
monplace books; as in a sale of articles of 
vertu, advertised as having belonged to a 
distinguished collector, the auctioneer will 
often take the opportunity of intermixing a 
considerable alloy of less genuine wares and 
clearing his warerooms of much rubbish 
that would have little chance of going off by 
itself. There can be no doubt that the repu- 
tation of eminent persons has frequently suf- 
fered greatly in this way at the hands of the 
Ana manufacturers. But, even when hon- 
est, few of the makers of these books seem 
to have had any superior qualifications for 
their task, or to have set about it in a way 
to insure its effective performance. They 
seem to have been most commonly more than 
ordinarily stupid people, with less than the 

21 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

average powers, not only of discrimination, 
but also of memory and comprehension. Of 
all the associates of the great scholar or wit 
the one who was least able either to reflect 
or to absorb his light appears usually to have 
charged himself with the office of preserving 
and transmitting it; as if a lump of earth 
should set up for a looking-glass. He who 
found himself most incapable of making a 
return for the good things he had heard by 
any good things of his own, that he might 
not be altogether useless, took up the post 
of reporter. Unfortunately, for that also 
he was least qualified. Of the little he under- 
stood, which was probably what was least 
worth understanding, he jotted down at his 
convenience the still less which he remem- 
bered, and that, again, was very possibly the 
least worth remembering; for such brains 
are like sieves, made to let the finer portion 
of what is put into them soon escape, and 
only to retain long what is comparatively 
gross and coarse. And thus, in some years, 
an x\na grew up under his hands ; a selection, 
indeed, from the conversations of the per- 
son after whom it was named, but a selec- 
tion rather of his poorest and riiost common- 
place remarks than of such as were most 
profound or refined." 

22 



Bygone Table-Talk Books 

After this, the reader will perceive that it 
is not every man that is able to report con- 
versations correctly ; for it is easier to invent 
than to report conversations ; and the reader 
will also understand why Boswell's Life of 
Dr. Johnson, which contains such admirably 
reported conversations, is so highly appre- 
ciated. 

When the rage for this kind of literature 
had, like the fashions, been transmitted to 
England, it was taken up by a man who had 
much in common with the Ana makers, 
though he was endowed with more talent 
than most of them ; for Horace Walpole was 
distinguished for wit and repartee, and 
noted for his talent as a raconteur and easy 
talker. He was, however, by no means 
noted for his reverence for truth and hon- 
esty, nor for his kindness to struggling 
genius ; as we have seen in the case of poor 
Chatterton, whom he had at first befriended, 
and afterward treated with neglect and 
cruelty. Having spent a great portion of 
his time among men eminent for genius and 
talent, and among fine lords and ladies who 
figured largely in the social and political life 
of his day, and having sources of informa- 
tion which few others possessed, he fur- 
nished the editor of Walpoliana with many 

2Z 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

anecdotes, bons-mots, and repartees of these 
people, all in his own hand; and after his 
death the whole was published in two vol- 
umes. Of the nature of this publication the 
reader may form some conception from Ma- 
caulay's characteristic description of its 
author: "The conformation of Walpole's 
mind was such that whatever was little 
seemed to him great, and whatever was 
great seemed to him little. Serious business 
was a trifle to him, and trifles were his seri- 
ous business." I imagine that Gay's epitaph 
in Westminster Abbey would have suited 
Walpole better than the man for whom it 
was intended : 

"Life is a jest, and all things show it: 
I thought so once, and now I know it." 

Then came Isaac Disraeli — father of the 
famous novelist, orator, and statesman. Lord 
Beaconsfield — with his Curiosities of Litera- 
ture, Calamities of Authors, and so forth; 
which, though possessing far more merit 
than any of the French Ana, are really 
the legitimate offspring of this species of 
literature. Disraeli was endowed with the 
true spirit of the Ana maker, being fond of 
everything rich and rare, strange and pecu- 
liar in literary history, and gifted with the 
24 



Bygone Table-Talk Books 

power of describing and narrating the per- 
sonal experiences, the pecuHarities and idio- 
syncrasies of celebrated people in a fascinat- 
ing style. He had the literary instinct, too, 
the taste and judgment of a connoisseur in 
the art of book-making, and he generally 
narrated in a piquant and striking manner 
whatever he knew himself or had learned 
from others. 

It is no wonder, therefore, that Disraeli's 
books became popular, especially among the 
polite and polished people of his day; for 
they afforded abundant material for enter- 
tainment, for spicy table talk and literary 
gossip; and he may be said to have aided 
in such intellectual equipment as Slender 
sought in the Book of Riddles and the Book 
of Songs and Sonnets. 

Disraeli had amassed a large stock of 
stories about authors, of curious anecdotes 
about men eminent in political and social 
life, and of interesting information about 
the origin, the success, or the failure of book- 
makers and publishers ; and all this he knew 
how to set forth in an attractive and pleasing 
manner. His books ministered, too, to that 
craving for closer acquaintance wdth states- 
men, princes, and men of genius, which has 
ever been a characteristic trait of the lovers 

25 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

of art and literature, and which I by no 
means consider an unworthy trait in man or 
woman ; for men and women, as well as chil- 
dren, love to get a glimpse of famous per- 
sonages behind the scenes, and see some- 
thing of the actors off the stage as well as on 
it. Disraeli's works are not to be despised. 
Nor are they entirely neglected even at the 
present day; for to those who are fond of 
curious details about the lives of distin- 
guished men, especially of authors, the origin 
of their books, and the working of their 
minds, there is abundant material, instruct- 
ive as well as amusing, in Disraeli's books. 
But the prince of Ana makers, the best of 
all the reporters of conversation and the first 
of biographers, w^as yet to come. In 1791 
James Boswell published his Life of Dr. 
Johnson, and all England instantly recog- 
nized it as the best work of the kind that had 
3^et appeared. This work, which has gone 
through more editions and had more com- 
mentators than any other English biography, 
contains the richest collection of Ana and the 
best-reported conversations of eminent men 
in the English language. It embraces so 
many interesting conversations, so many de- 
lightful anecdotes, curious details, and re- 
markable sayings of eminent persons, that 
26 



Bygone Tap^le-Talk Books 

all lovers of literature are attracted by it, and 
some have even made a practice of reading 
it once a year. As for the writer, it made an 
impression on him as deep and delightful, as 
new and surprising, as that which Chap- 
man's Horner, on a first reading, produced 
on Keats : 

"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies 
When a new planet swims into his ken ; 

Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes 
He stared at the Pacific — and all his men 

Looked at each other with a wild surmise — 
Silent, upon a peak in Darien." 

Dr. Johnson, who was himself one of the 
ablest and most learned men of his time, 
lived in an age noted for men and women of 
intellectual eminence, most of whom he per- 
sonally knew; and it may be said of this 
biography that it admits the reader, perhaps 
more completely than any other book, into 
the society and the companionship, the life 
and thought of the eminent men of whom it 
treats, and enables the reader to know them 
"in their habit as they lived." More than 
this : it gives a vivid picture of the manners 
and customs, the thought and feeling of the 
various classes of English people in the 
eighteenth century; and after reading the 
27 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

book carefully we seem to know the people 
of the last century better than we know those 
of our own. 

Boswell was not only the best of the Ana 
makers, but the most successful and accurate 
reporter of the conversations of the scholars, 
statesmen, authors, actors, and artists whom 
he met; and he has done for Johnson and 
his friends what no other biographer has 
succeeded so well in doing. Dr. Johnson 
talked with people of all ranks and profes- 
sions, and Boswell caught the talk as it fell 
from their lips. This was a great feat, and 
the reading public have recognized it as 
such; for it is no small achievement to have 
successfully reported the talk of Burke, 
Goldsmith, Reynolds, Garrick, Foote, 
Wilkes, Beauclerc, Mrs. Siddons, Kemble, 
Miss Burney, and a hundred other eminent 
persons of the time. Macaulay, indeed, af- 
fects to despise ''poor Bozzy," and speaks of 
his fame as "marvelously resembling in- 
famy;'^ but I am sure that most good judges 
of literature will agree with me in pronoun- 
cing Boswell's Life of Dr. Johnson quite as 
entertaining and instructive, quite as good 
a picture of a bygone age, and quite as likely 
to endure the test of time, as Macaulay's 

fascinating History of England, or even his 
28 



Bygone Table-Talk Books 

brilliant Essays on the great men of English 
history. Macaulay was himself a famous 
talker; but who has given us any report of 
his talk ? Who has been edified by it, except 
those who heard it? ''With life before 
them, and each intent on his own future," 
says Mr. Trevelyan, his biographer, speak- 
ing of Macaulay's talks with his friends, 
''none of them had the mind to play Bos well 
to the others." Indeed, Mr. Trevelyan, you 
speak more truly than you had intended ; for 
not one of them had the mind, the Boswellian 
skill and talent, to reproduce those conver- 
sations, which have been so highly praised. 
It needed a Plato to reproduce the conversa- 
tions of Socrates, and none but a man of 
uncommon talent could reproduce those of 
Macaulay. 

Dr. Wynne, in a book describing the pri- 
vate libraries of New York city, makes the 
remarkable statement that the library of the 
late William E. Burton, the comedian, con- 
tained no fewer than one hundred volumes 
of Table Talk! Surely these must, if they 
were all different works, have consisted 
largely of the French and Italian Ana of 
which I have just spoken. Burton w^as an 
omnivorous reader and an indefatigable col- 
lector of books; but who, except a book 
29 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

collector like himself, has ever heard of more 
than half a dozen books of Table Talk in the 
English language? Even among the French 
there are at the present day few noteworthy 
books of this sort ; and as for the English, I 
do not know more than half a dozen even by 
name. 

The scores of books of this nature printed 
in the last century are all gone ; the general 
public knows nothing of them; no eye now 
sees them; no ear hears of them; no one 
reads or quotes from them; they have dis- 
appeared before the breath of Time like 
snow before the rays of the sun. So that 
these hundred or more volumes of Table 
Talk must be the dead, neglected Ana of the 
last century. And what did Burton want 
them for? Probably to help him out in his 
''Cyclopedia of Wit and Humor," or to af- 
ford a suggestion or two for his comedies. 

Books in a library and books that are read 
are two things. A book may be as dead as a 
doornail, and still be found occasionally in 
a library. No book, unless it possess some- 
thing of real intrinsic merit, something that 
renders it as valuable for one generation as 
for another, will survive. Probably not 
more than one in a hundred, if so many, of 

the works published at the present day, will 
30 



Bygone Table-Talk Books 

be read a hundred years hence. Many of 
them may be found in a Hbrary, but not in 
the minds or mouths of men. Even among 
the most brilHant talkers, how few of them 
have uttered things that still live ! Mackin- 
tosh was one of the most brilliant talkers of 
his day; and yet who knows or remembers 
anything he ever uttered? Of Sydney 
Smith's ever-flowing and ever-pleasing con- 
versational wit and wisdom, how much now 
remains? Nothing, except a few stray 
scraps, gathered here and there among his 
many friends. 

These famous talkers had no Boswell, it 
may be said, and this is why their talk has 
been lost. Possibly ; for a Boswell is as rare 
as a good talker, and the two are seldom 
found together. Such a combination did 
exist, however, even before the time of Bos- 
well and Johnson; not exactly so good as 
that of these two, but perhaps the best, with 
this one exception, since that of Plato and 
Socrates. I refer of course to the report of the 
Table-Talk of John Selden by Richard 
Milward, which, though older than any of 
the French and Italian Ana, is still read, still 
lives, and is considered far superior to any 
of them. It is read, indeed, not merely by 
scholars and persons of taste and refinement, 
3 31 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

but by intelligent people of all ranks, than 
which a better test of merit can hardly be 
found. Selden's utterances are not always 
brilliant, not always even polished, but they 
are full of sound sense, of sage counsel, and 
of deep thought; and though they were ut- 
tered more than two centuries ago they are 
still of value, still powerful for guidance and 
counsel, even to us at the present day. 

Dr. Johnson, talking with Boswell about 
French literature, said: "Their Ana are 
good; some of them are good; but we have 
one book of that kind better than any of 
them, Selden's Table-Talk.^' Hallam gave 
the same verdict; Coleridge set the highest 
value on it; and the world has confirmed 
the judgment of these able men; for while 
the French Ana have fallen into utter neg- 
lect, Selden's Table-Talk still lives, and 
is still read by men and women of the best 
sort. 

Of the author of this remarkable book, 
who lived in the reigns of four sovereigns 
(if the last, Cromwell, may be called a sover- 
eign), and who had probably a larger share 
in the memorable events of his day than most 
of the eminent persons who figured in it, 
there are several memoirs extant, though 

most of them are rather dry and scanty. I 
32 



Bygone Table- Talk Books 

must, however, before presenting his Table- 
Talk^ give some account of his career, 
founded on these memoirs; for his Talk will 
become all the more significant after the 
reader has made some acquaintance with his 
life. 

The period in which Selden lived is so full 
of important events, so rich in new ideas and 
so crowded with eminent men, that even this 
slight sketch cannot fail to be attractive to 
those who take an interest in the history of 
our race; for it is the period in which the 
original founders of our own republican 
government lived and moved ; in which they 
played such an important part in the struggle 
for constitutional government ; and in which 
so many of them, determined to found a new 
and freer state than that with which they 
had been acquainted, crossed the stormy At- 
lantic and planted on these shores those free 
political institutions which have since taken 
such deep root, grown to such wide propor- 
tions, and influenced so largely the condition 
of the civilized world. 'The people of the 
United States," says Daniel Webster, "de- 
scendants of the English stock, admit with 
gratitude and filial regard that, among those 
ancestors, under the culture of Hampden and 
Sydney and other assiduous patriots, the 
33 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

seed of popular liberty first germinated, 
which on our soil has shot up to its full 
height, until its branches overshadow all the 
land." It looks, indeed, now as if those 
branches were likely to "overshadow all the 
earth." 

34 



Career of John Selden 



II 

Selden 's Career 

John Selden lived in the reigns of Eliza- 
beth, James the First, Charles the First, and 
Cromwell (1584- 1659), and had not only a 
long, wide, and varied experience as scholar, 
writer, and statesman, but filled creditably 
various political and other important offices 
during this eventful period. Born of humble 
parents, in a hamlet on the coast of Sussex, 
young Selden after his first schooling deter- 
mined to become a lawyer; and he soon 
found friends who sent him to Oxford, 
where he spent four years in hard study, and 
then came to the Inner Temple in London. 
Let me say here, for the benefit of the young 
reader, that this Inner Temple is one of the 
four Inns of Court — colleges in the metropo- 
lis where barristers and students of law 
resi*de while pursuing their professional 
studies. It is the joint property of two 
bodies, called the Honorable Societies of the 
Inner Temple and of the Middle Temple, 
who are the private proprietors of the build- 
35 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

ings, and who exercise general supervision 
over the whole legal fraternity. 

Here Selden made the acquaintance of 
several eminent men in his own profession, 
who were of considerable use to him in his 
mental development. An old chronicler tells 
us that ''it was the constant and almost daily 
habit of these great traders in learning to 
bring in their acquisitions in a common stock 
by natural communication [that is, by con- 
versation] ; whereby each of them became, 
in a great measure, the participant and com- 
mon possessor of each other's learning and 
knowledge." 

A band of generous and noble-hearted fel- 
lows truly. Young Selden could not have 
had better associates; and I have no doubt 
he learned quite as much from them as he 
did from his professors at Oxford. For 
such companionship is often, as in the case 
of Goethe at Strasburg and Leipsic, the 
prime spring of a great man's intellectual 
development. 

This age, the age of Shakespeare, has been 

well termed the ''social age," or the "age of 

conversation," in which men learned by 

"natural communication" better than they 

could have learned by any other means. The 

students of this age did not read so much, 
36 



Career of John Selden 

but they conversed more than those of our 
day, and that is how that unconscious learn- 
ing was instilled into them which gave them 
that large power of utterance, that gift of 
good English speech, which is so character- 
istic of the writers and speakers of the Eliza- 
bethan age. 

So it was here, while residing in the Tem- 
ple, that Selden's learning began to attract 
attention; and it was probably through the 
friends he made here that he became ac- 
quainted with many of the literary celebri- 
ties of the day. For, according to Mr. Sing- 
er, one of his biographers, Selden appears 
to have become a member of the Mermaid 
Tavern Club, established by Sir Walter 
Raleigh, where those famous ''wit combats" 
between Shakespeare and Ben Jonson took 
place, and where the wits and poets of the 
day ''most did congregate." This Tavern 
gathering was probably the first of those 
English literary and social clubs which have 
since become so famous and so common, not 
only in England, but in America; and it is 
evident that Selden, being himself a good 
talker, loved to participate in the meetings of 
such a club, where not only wit and humor, 
but sound sense and extensive knowledge, 

were often displayed. 

37 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

Among the members of this club was 
Michael Drayton, with whom Selden be- 
came to a certain extent a colaborer; for he 
wrote the notes to Drayton's chief work, the 
'Toly-Olbion," which notes are said to dis- 
play great learning and wide research. And 
with another member, Ben Jonson, we know 
that he stood on the most familiar terms; 
for he borrowed books from Jonson, wrote 
complimentary verses for some of his works, 
and repeatedly speaks of the learned drama- 
tist as his "beloved friend." When Ben Jon- 
son was released from prison, where he had 
been confined for a time for some fancied 
insult, in one of his plays, to King James L, 
a banquet was given in honor of his deliver- 
ance, at which Selden was present, and 
where he doubtless showed his appreciation 
of his friend and his joy at his release from 
''durance vile." Selden had also won the 
esteem and friendship of such solid men as 
Camden, Usher, Sir Robert Cotton, and Sir 
Henry Spelman. Unhappily, we find no 
mention of his acquaintance with Shake- 
speare (him, the greatest of them all, nobody 
seems to have known), although we find 
that, in later years, he was associated with 
Lord Bacon in preparing classical costumes 

for a masque to be played before the king. 

38 



Career of John Selden 

So that Seidell's personal acquaintance 
embraced not only the ablest lawyers and 
statesmen and the most gifted divines and 
scholars, but also the best wits and poets of 
the day. It is evident, as we shall see by and 
by, that he valued and cultivated the friend- 
ship of such men as among the most precious 
things in life. 

Nor did he himself fall behind them in 
knowledge and ability; for he subsequently 
greatly distinguished himself by his knowl- 
edge and capacity as a jurist and statesman, 
as an expounder of international law, of na- 
tional jurisprudence, of ancient custom and 
usage, and as a writer on legal, ecclesiastical, 
and political history. 

A/[eanwhile years passed and times 
changed. Elizabeth and James were dead; 
and Charles the First, with his obstinate 
character and despotic notions of kingly 
government, was on the throne. Now be- 
gan that tremendous struggle between king 
and parliament which fills so many pages in 
English history and which ended so glori- 
ously for the people. Selden was in Parlia- 
ment ; and though by no means a republican, 
he was decidedly liberal in his views, and an 
opponent of the king in all his arbitrary and 
tyrannical measures. So that in 1629 he 
39 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

was, with five other members, thrown into 
the Tower, where he remained till 1633. 
His noble and eminent colleague, Sir John 
Eliot, died there, a martyr to liberty; but 
John Selden was not to be so easily crushed. 
He went bravely to work at his literary 
studies; relieved the tedium of the time by 
hard work with his pen ; and finally emerged, 
hale and hearty, with one or two new works, 
ready for the press, under his arm. 

Selden was a constitutional lawyer and 
legislator. Whatever was according to the 
Constitution he favored; whatever was not, 
he opposed. When the king endeavored to 
levy taxes without the consent of Parlia- 
ment, he opposed him; when he established 
the Star Chamber proceedings, he opposed 
him; but when the Puritans wished to de- 
throne him, he opposed them. Although he 
would limit the power of the king, he would 
neither dethrone him nor abolish the mon- 
archy. Whatever was reasonable, he fa- 
vored ; whatever was not, he opposed. You 
will see this in the Talks. He was not 
against the bishops as such, but he was op- 
posed to their acting as legislators. He was 
emphatically a reasoning, thinking, well- 
disposed man, who favored whatever had 

worked well so far, and opposed whatever 
40 



Career of John Selden 

seemed to be of a dangerous character in the 
way of innovation. 

In 1640 Selden had the high honor of 
being chosen to represent Oxford in Padia- 
ment; and here, by his great learning and 
ability and by the moderation of his coun- 
sels, he gained not only the esteem of his 
own party, the Conservative, but that of the 
other, the Puritan; for the leaders of the 
Puritan party as wxll as those of the Con- 
servative frequently consulted him on points 
of law and on parliamentary practice. This 
is the famous Long Parliament, which 
makes such a figure in English history, and 
which passed laws and ordinances more radi- 
cal perhaps than those passed by any other 
English Parliament that ever sat. Here Sel- 
den, though strongly favoring true reforms, 
acted rather as a wise guide and counselor 
than as a partisan leader ; for he stood on the 
law and Constitution of England, and would 
not depart from either on any account. 
He was equally opposed to the sweeping and 
radical changes of the Roundheads and the 
arbitrary and illegal measures of the Royal- 
ists ; he would neither dethrone the king nor 
agree to his despotic measures, but coun- 
seled patience, endurance, and toleration — 
acting and speaking, in both instances, with 
41 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

that calmness and moderation, that firmness 
and abihty which ever distinguished him. 
'Ill poh'tics," says Mr. Singer, ''Selden was 
ever inclined to moderation; and, leagued 
with a few true lovers of their country, he 
pursued a temperate and thoughtful course, 
as became a legislator and patriot." Other 
writers bear similar testimony to his modera- 
tion and wisdom. "He appeared in the great 
National Council," says a modern English 
writer, "not so much as the representative 
of the contemporary inhabitants of a par- 
ticular city, as of all the people in past and 
present ages; concerning whom and whose 
institutions he was deemed to know what- 
ever was to be known, and to be able to fur- 
nish whatever, within so vast a retrospect, 
was of a nature to give light and authority 
to statesmen in the decision of questions 
arising in a doubtful and hazardous state of 
the national affairs." 

It Is certain that Selden, by his learning, 
moderation, and sound sense, exercised a 
restraining influence on the more radical 
leaders of that revolutionary period; it is 
certain that he helped to temper their zeal, 
which, without his influence, would have 
caused them to go beyond proper limits in 

their efforts at reform. So that, had it not 
42 



Career of John Selden 

been for him, and some others Hke him, this 
Barebones ParHament might have gone as 
far as the Sans Culottes National Assembly 
of France, and ruined everything in the way 
of good government. One of the fanatics 
in this Parliament proposed, for instance, the 
burning of the records in the Tower, as use- 
less memorials, which Selden, by an eloquent 
and convincing speech, prevented; and 
another proposed the restriction and spolia- 
tion of the two great universities, Oxford 
and Cambridge, as useless and aristocratic 
institutions, which the same strong speaker, 
by an unanswerable argument and a moving 
appeal to the reason and common sense of 
his colleagues, also prevented. Fortunate 
it was that there were men in that Parlia- 
ment capable of listening to reason and 
sound sense; else the revolution of 1640 
might have presented in English history a 
spectacle quite as appalling as that of 1789 
in the history of France. 

Mr. Matthew Arnold, while trying to 
show that the Puritans, whatever other good 
qualities they possessed, had no love of 
beauty, says : 'Tet us go to facts. Charles 
the First, who, with all his faults, had the 
just idea that art and letters are great civil- 
izers, made, as you know, a famous collec- 
43 



Selden and His Table- Talk 

tion of pictures — our first National Gallery. 
It was, I suppose, the best collection at that 
time north of the Alps. It contained nine 
Raphaels, eleven Correggios, and twenty- 
eight Titians. What became of that collec- 
tion? The journals of the House of Com- 
mons will tell you. There you may see the 
Puritan Parliament disposing of this White- 
hall or York House collection as follows: 
'Ordered, that all such pictures and statues 
there as are without any superstition, shall 
be forthwith sold. . . . Ordered, that 
all such pictures there as have the represen- 
tation of the Second Person in Trinity 
(Christ) upon them, shall be forthwith 
burnt. Ordered, that all such pictures there 
as have the representation of the Virgin 
Mary upon them, shall be forthwith burnt.' '' 

Selden, it appears, was powerless to pre- 
vent this piece of vandalism; but it shows 
what kind of men he had to contend with. 
Few men, I imagine, ever found themselves 
among such uncongenial colleagues as Sel- 
den did in this Puritan Parliament ; and it is 
no wonder he was strongly opposed to many 
of their measures. 

The course which Selden recommends in 
religion he probably followed also in poli- 
tics: *'Be sure you keep to what is settled, 
44 



Career of John Selden 

and then you may flourish on your various 
lections." Instead of tearing things up by 
the roots, and creating general disorder, he 
endeavored to maintain the restrictions of 
the Constitution, and to modify and improve 
the existing laws and institutions to suit the 
time; in other words, he tried to make the 
settled things work satisfactorily, without 
detriment to individual liberty, and without 
disturbing the peace and prosperity of the 
country. 

Although he opposed the king in his il- 
legal and unconstitutional measures, he 
would not deprive him of all power, nor de- 
prive him of his rightful authority, but 
strove to make him walk within constitu- 
tional limits. In this endeavor, however, 
he failed; for the king would not listen to 
anything of the kind ; nor would his adher- 
ents. Besides, his majesty's word could not 
be depended on; he made promises to the 
Parliament which he never did and never 
intended to keep; so a change of dynasty 
seemed absolutely necessary, and it came. 
Cromwell and his party were triumphant, 
and the king and his party were overthrown. 
I cannot help feeling, however, that the com- 
pany that gathered round Selden was of a 

nobler character, animated by purer motives, 
45 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

and inspired by greater and higher wisdom, 
than that which gathered round Cromwell, 
who surrounded himself by men of a violent 
and fanatical character. Had Charles and 
his family been banished the kingdom, and al- 
lowed to work out his foolish notions abroad, 
the English republic would probably have 
lasted longer than it did, and the king would 
never have been venerated and worshiped 
as a martyr, as he afterward was. (and is) 
by many thousands of Englishmen. 

Selden saw clearly that the clergy and 
the laity could not, in the making of laws, 
work well together ; hence his strong opposi- 
tion to the bishops' sitting in Parliament, to 
the collection of tithes, and to other ecclesi- 
astical abuses of the time. But he would 
not, like the Roundheads, have the bishops 
or the Church or the monarchy altogether 
abolished ; he was not an enemy either to the 
Church or to the monarchy, but simply to 
abuses in the same; he strove, by every 
means in his power, to restrain both the 
Church and the king within their proper 
spheres, and to make them work according 
to the spirit and intention of the laws of 
England. Thus his views satisfied neither 
party, and he consequently succeeded in 

making many enemies in both. 
46 



Career of John Selden 

To show how sharply he turned the 
edge of the logic of the Roundheads against 
themselves, one or two examples will suf- 
fice. When Alderman Pennington rose, in 
the House of Commons, and said: "Mr. 
Speaker, there are so many clamors against 
such and such of the prelates, that we shall 
never be quiet till we have no more bishops," 
Mr. Selden rose and desired the House to 
observe "what grievous complaints there 
were for high misdemeanors against such 
and such of the aldermen ; and therefore, by 
a parity of reasoning, it is my humble mo- 
tion that we have no more aldermen." 

When certain sectarian ministers pre- 
sented a remonstrance to Parliament respect- 
ing Church government, the debate pro- 
ceeded upon the right of bishops to suspend 
the inferior clergy from the" performance of 
their ministerial duties. In opposition to this 
right. Sir H. Grimstone employed the follow- 
ing logic : "That bishops are jure divino (of 
divine institution) is a question; that arch- 
bishops are not jiii^e divino is out of ques- 
tion; now that bishops, who are questioned 
whether jure divino or not, or archbishops, 
who out of question are not jure divino, 
should suspend ministers, who are jure 
divino, I leave to be considered." 
4 47 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

To which Selden thus replied : 'That the 
Convocation [an assembly of clergy and 
laity, called by the Crown or the Parliament, 
to form or revise the laws and liturgy of the 
Church] is jure divino is a question; that 
Parliaments are not jure divino is out of 
question; that religion is jure divino there 
is no question. Now, sir, that the Convoca- 
tion, which is questionable whether jure 
divino or not, and Parliaments, which out of 
question are not jure divino, should meddle 
with religion, which, questionless, is jure 
divino, I leave to your consideration." 

Sir H. Grimstone, pursuing his argument, 
observed "that archbishops are not bishops." 
To which Selden replied : ''That is not other- 
wise true than that judges are no lawyers, 
and aldermen no citizens." 

In a synod of divines and laymen, assem- 
bled at Westminster in 1643 ''to settle the 
grievances and the liturgy of the Church of 
England," Mr. Selden was a member; and 
when, as Sir John Birkenhead reports, "the 
Commons tired him with their new laws, 
these brethren [of the synod] refreshed him 
with their mad gospel. They were graveled 
lately between Jerusalem and Jericho; they 
knew not the distance between these two 

places ; one cried twenty miles ; another ten ; 
48 



Career of John Selden 

then it was concluded seven, for this reason, 
that fish zms brought from Jericho to Jeru- 
salem market. Whereupon Mr. Selden 
smiled, and said, 'Perhaps the fish was salt 
fish;' and so stopped their mouths." 

Whitelock, the historian, speaking of this 
Assembly, says : "Selden spoke admirably, 
and confuted them in their own learning. 
Sometimes, when they had cited a text of 
Scripture to prove their assertion, he would 
tell them, 'Perhaps in your little pocket- 
bibles with gilt leaves (which they would 
often pull out and read) the translation may 
be thus and thus, but the Greek or Hebrew 
signifies thus or thus;' and so would silence 
them." 

Thus it will be seen that Selden, in wit 
as well as in learning and argument, was 
more than a match for his opponents. He 
would not, however, go far enough, on either 
side, to please either party; and probably it 
was well he did not, for there were plenty of 
others ready to go all lengths, to suit their 
purpose ; so that a restraining hand was salu- 
tary and needful on these zealots. 

Although Selden stood firmly, on general 
principles, for king, lords, and commons, and 
was ever inclined to be liberal and progress- 
ive in legislative enactments, it is not sur- 
49 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

prising to find that, when Charles was over- 
thrown, he was not in favor of his execu- 
tion, nor of the abohtion of the monarchy, 
nor of the demoHtion of the Church. He 
saw that this would be the ruin not only of 
many good things, but of many good people, 
whom he esteemed and loved. It was dur- 
ing this critical period that he endeavored to 
save, and did save, many of his loyal friends 
and supporters from utter ruin and disgrace, 
and acted as a pacificator and mediator in the 
midst of the triumphant party. One of these, 
as we shall see, was Archbishop Usher, 
the famous Irish prelate. But when Crom- 
well requested him to answer the Eikon 
Basilikc — the king's defense of himself, as 
written by one of his bishops — Selden de- 
clined the task, and doubtless thereby lost 
much favor in the eyes of the powerful Pro- 
tector. This was too radical a piece of work 
for him; he could not undertake it with a 
good conscience or wath proper self-respect ; 
so the work was given to a more thorough- 
going reformer, a true republican as well as 
a poet, John Milton, who put his whole heart 
and soul into it, and produced that master- 
piece of political controversy, Eikonoklastes, 
which was read by all Europe, and which 
produced a profound impression wherever it 
50 



Career of John Selden 

was read. This work was, like that to which 
it was an answer, written in Latin; since it 
was intended for all the learned and govern- 
ing heads in Europe, with whom Latin was 
in those days a universal accomplishment. 
And when it is remembered that Milton was 
Cromwell's Latin secretary — for all the for- 
eign despatches were, at that time and long 
afterward, written in Latin — it will be evi- 
dent that Cromwell had not far to seek nor 
long to wait for a defender who could per- 
form the task to his entire satisfaction. The 
reader who is familiar with the life of Milton 
will remember that the poet had at one time 
contemplated writing his great epic. Para- 
dise Lost, in Latin, which it was well he did 
not attempt, for no man can write so well in 
a foreign language as he can in his own. 

Some writers have sneered at Selden as 
the Erasmus of the English political refor- 
mation; but those who speak in this way 
have no real knowledge of the time, nor of 
the true merits of either Erasmus or Selden. 
Both men performed a great educational 
work for their age; and because Erasmus 
could not go as far as Luther, nor Selden as 
far as Cromwell, no judicious or well-in- 
formed critic can blame either. Both had 
great merits, great learning, and great talents 
51 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

of their own, which they used for their coun- 
try and kind as best they could ; and because 
they did not use their talents and their learn- 
ing in precisely the same w^ay in which others 
did, or in furthering precisely the same ob- 
jects, surely this is no reason for condemn- 
ing their actions altogether. 

Though Selden could not approve of all 
the acts of the Cromwellians, he was ever the 
determined enemy of misgovernment, of 
tyranny, of sectarian bigotry, and of wrong 
in every shape. Had he had his way, the 
Puritans would never have been persecuted, 
nor the Presbyterians oppressed and tor- 
tured, nor the people taxed without their 
consent. We must never forget that Selden 
was one of the prosecutors of the infamous 
Duke of Buckingham, one of the defenders 
of the patriotic Hampden, one of the origi- 
nal framers of the memorable Petition of 
Right, which is a corner stone of English 
political liberty. Selden's speech in support 
of this Petition is characterized as an un- 
answerable argument; and when we con- 
sider the important and far-reaching results 
of that Petition, it is probably not too much 
to say that every free man, both in England 
and America, owes him a debt of gratitude 

for his efforts in the cause of liberty. 

52 



Career of John Selden 

So much for Selden as a man and legisla- 
tor; now for his character as a writer and 
talker. His influence as a legislator, which 
was great in his own day, has extended down 
to ours, and his influence as a talker, which 
was great in his lifetime, and has been con- 
siderable since his death, will extend prob- 
ably far into the future. Had he not been a 
good as well as a great man he would never 
have commanded the respect and influence 
he did command; nor do I think that any 
man, however great his abilities, can com- 
mand a wide and beneficial influence without 
being at the same time a good man. ''A 
corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit;" 
"neither do men gather grapes of thorns, nor 
figs of thistles." Dean Swift, it is true, is 
still read; his marvelous style, rare genius, 
and brilliant wit will ever command atten- 
tion; but who has ever felt himself uplifted 
or edified by anything written by Dean 
Swift? The most touching lesson taught 
by this unhappy man is that afforded by his 
melancholy and unhappy life. 

Lord Clarendon, who, though generally 
opposed to Selden in politics, remained his 
lifelong friend (a circumstance highly 
creditable to the character of both men), 
thus describes him : ''Mr. Selden was a per- 
53 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

son whom no character can flatter, or trans- 
mit in any expression equal to his merit and 
virtue. He was of such stupendous learning 
in all kinds and in all languages, that a man 
would have thought he had been entirely 
conversant among books, and had never 
spent an hour but in reading and writing; 
yet his humanity, courtesy, and affability 
were such, that he would have been thought 
to have been bred in the best courts, but that 
his good nature, charity, delight in doing 
good, and in communicating all he knew 
exceeded that breeding. His style, in all his 
writings, seems harsh and sometimes ob- 
scure, which is not wholly to be attributed 
to the abstruse subjects of which he com- 
monly treated, but to a little undervaluing of 
style, and to too much propensity to the 
language of antiquity; but in his conversa- 
tion he zvas the most clear discourser, and 
had the best facidty of making hard things 
easy, and of presenting them clearly to 
the understanding, of any man that hath 
been knozvn." This criticism is certainly 
justified by a comparison of his writings 
with his talk. But of this presently. 

''By a vote of the House of Commons, 
November 8, 1643," says Mr. Singer, ''Sel- 
den was appointed Keeper of the Records in 
54 



Career of John Selden 

the Tower — an office for which he was pecu- 
harly fitted, and which probably furnished 
him with an excuse for gradually withdraw- 
ing from the political vortex, where he found 
himself almost alone in his position as a 
moderator. Yet upon important occasions 
he was still to be found at his post, as long as 
he thought he could be useful." 

This office he seems to have resigned in 
1645, i-ipon the passing of the Self-Denying 
Ordinance ; and he appears after this period 
to have devoted himself almost entirely to 
literary pursuits and learned researches. We 
find him occasionally assisting ecclesiastical 
and other friends who had fallen into dis- 
favor with the government, and aiding all 
efforts to advance learning and literature; 
but otherwise he seems to have devoted him- 
self to his books, living quietly in the house- 
hold of the Duchess of Kent, where he often 
met and entertained his friends, and where 
he died in 1654. I shall, after we have made 
some acquaintance with his Table Talk, give 
some details of his closing years, which will, 
I think, be read with more interest when we 
have become a little better acquainted with 

the spirit and thought of the man. 

55 



Selden and His Table- Talk 



III 

Origin of the Table-Talk — Secret of 
ITS Popularity — Parallel between 
Selden and Johnson , 

Selden's Table Talk was taken down by 
the Rev. Richard Milward, who had been 
his amanuensis and daily companion for over 
twenty years, and who declared that "the 
sense and notion" of the Talk are "wholly 
his," and "most of the words." The work 
was not published till nine years after the 
death of the compiler (1689), which was 
thirty-five years after the death of the author. 
It is recognized as an authentic record, con- 
firmed by the evidence of the work itself and 
by the testimony of those who knew Selden 
personally. To Milward, who was the only 
man among Selden's numerous friends who 
had the good sense and the ability to make 
some record of his conversation, the world 
owes a debt of gratitude, and his name 
should be held in kindly remembrance by all 

lovers of good literature. Such men are rare 
56 



Origin of the Table-Talk 

— men who have the discrimination to value 
and the capacity to report the conversation 
of a great man — and his meed of fame 
should not be denied him. Not one among 
Shakespeare's or Bacon's friends saw any- 
thing in their conversation worthy of record 
— or, if they did, they were too dull or too 
indolent to make any record of it — and all 
the more honor is due to Richard Milward, 
who appreciated the talk of his master, and 
had the wit to understand and the talent to 
record the wise sayings that fell from his 
lips. 

So here is an extraordinary thing. A 
book of which the author, though its con- 
tents are all his own, knew nothing; a book 
which he did not compose, nor intend for 
publication; a book which lay neglected for 
years after the author's death, and even after 
the death of the compiler, who had probably 
forgotten all about it — here, I say, is an ex- 
traordinary thing: that this singular book, 
which surpasses in interest all the works 
written and published by the author, should 
be the work by which he is best known, and 
by w^hich his name and fame are transmitted 
to posterity! For of the works composed 
by Selden himself few persons nowadays 

except learned jurists and studious antiqua- 

57 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

rians know anything; they are of a nature 
Httle interesting to the world in general, 
written in an antiquated style, and treating 
of subjects which have long since been 
handled by others in a clearer light and 
fresher style. So that if it were not for Mil- 
ward's record of his Table Talk, Selden 
would probably be as little known and as 
rarely read as many of the other numerous 
learned and voluminous writers of his day. 
What is the secret of its popularity? In 
the age of the author its popularity may be 
accounted for by,the fact that Selden, in his 
Talk, gives the public a glimpse of the actors 
behind the scenes, and reveals the inner 
springs, the thoughts, motives, and opinions 
of many who played a prominent part on the 
political stage of his day. But this cannot 
explain the attraction of the book among 
the generations who have come and gone 
since it was published. No; its fascination 
lies in the intrinsic merit of the work it- 
self; in the style, the language, the thoughts 
of the author, and in the eternal verities 
which he proclaims. In fact, the work pre- 
sents one of the best possible illustrations of 
Buffon's phrase, ''Le style c'est rhommef 
for we see here the very man himself in 
almost every sentence he utters. Every 
58 



Origin of the Taele-Talk 

thought he expresses is so characteristic of 
him that it could not be mistaken for that of 
any other man. This keen, shrewd, careful, 
caustic old lawyer, with his thin visage, 
sharp nose, tall figure, and plain speech, 
stands out before us in every word he utters 
as distinctly as if we saw him before our 
eyes. We can see how such a man, with his 
wide experience of the world and large 
knowledge of recent and past history, fasci- 
nated those who listened to him; and we can 
imagine the effect his utterances must have 
had, clinched as they always were by some 
pithy, homely comparison, on those who lis- 
tened to him. If the report of his Talk is so 
striking, what must the thing itself have 
been ? For the report is but a mere outline 
of his conversation, after all. 

Among his friends Selden threw off the 
garb which he wore as a writer and showed 
himself in the plainest attire ; always express- 
ing his thought in the common home-bred 
speech of the people. With that uncompro- 
mising love of truth, that strong common 
sense, or, as some term it, "horse-sense," 
characteristic of most Englishmen, he at 
once reaches and covers the point at issue, 
and, however high the subject, illustrates it 
by a homely simile which at once renders it 

59 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

clear to the understanding, and fixes it in 
the memory forever. 

It is a remarkable fact that Selden in this 
respect bears a strong resemblance to that 
other learned and voluminous writer, Dr. 
Johnson, whose fame now rests chiefly on 
Boswell's report of his conversation with his 
friends. Both men spoke better than they 
wrote; both wrote in a manner quite differ- 
ent from that in which they talked ; for while, 
in their writings, they displayed vast learn- 
ing and critical skill in a labored and Latin- 
ized style, in their conversation they ex- 
hibited strong common sense and a wide 
knowledge of men and affairs in plain, forci- 
ble, idiomatic English. It is true, most of 
Selden's writings are in Latin ; but his Eng- 
lish writings are almost as high-strung and 
labored as his Latin. In his talk we see the 
man ''in his habit as he lived," while in his 
books we see only the learned advocate, 
speaking in the conventional style and wear- 
ing the conventional garb of his profession. 
It was chiefly in his conversation that Selden 
displayed that ''faculty of making hard 
things easy" which made such an impression 
upon Lord Clarendon; and the same thing 
may be said of Dr. Johnson, whose conversa- 
tion seems to have an ever-increasing attrac- 
60 



Origin of the Table-Talk 

tion, while his writings are, I think, faUing 
more and more into neglect. 

To the literary student and to the young 
writer and orator this fact should serve as an 
instructive lesson. For, as a general thing, 
it may be safely asserted, I think, that the 
greater the man the simpler the words in 
which he clothes his thought ; and vice versa. 
This rule will stand for conversation and 
oratory, at all events. And the fact that 
both of these able and learned men should, 
for their unstudied talk, receive an audience 
and a hearing immeasurably larger than they 
ever received for their labored and studied 
writings, is an example that illustrates in a 
striking manner the greater attractiveness of 
plain speech over what may be termed re- 
fined and elaborate composition. What is 
expressed with difficulty enters the mind 
with difficulty; and most people do not care 
to read books that require labor or exertion 
to understand them. This lesson is some- 
times enforced by a reference to the writings 
of Defoe and Swift, of Bunyan and Cobbett ; 
but I think it is still more distinctly marked 
by a comparison of the written and spoken 
language of Selden and Johnson. 

In the case of Dr. Johnson, Macaulay 

makes the distinction plain by quoting the 
6i 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

remark of the Doctor touching a certain 
play, ''It has not wit enough to keep it 
sweet;" and then the different expression he 
gave to it when he thought his remark not 
dignified enough: "I mean, sir, it has not 
vitahty enough to preserve it from putrefac- 
tion." This last was his written style, while 
the former, which is far superior, was his 
spoken style. The same comparison might 
be made with regard to the language of Sel- 
den, who, before sitting down to dinner, was 
accustomed to say: 'T will keep myself 
warm and moist as long as I live ; for when 
I am dead I shall be cold and dry." Note 
that every word in this sentence, except one, 
is of one syllable. Now, if he had to write 
this sentence, he would probably have said : 
''As long as I enjoy the happiness of exist- 
ence, I shall endeavor to preserve my cor- 
poreal frame in a condition of warmth and 
comfort ; for when my spirit has quitted this 
earthly sphere, my hands will be as cold 
as hyperborean ice, and my body as dry as 
the desiccated sands of the Arabian desert." 
When an able New York clergyman had 
preached a written sermon in the morning 
and a free-spoken one in the evening, one of 
his hearers said to him, "Doctor, your ser- 
mon this morning was Latin; that of this 
62 



Origin of the Table-Talk 

evening was English; I prefer the EngHsh 
by far." That man, you may be sure, spoke 
for more than himself in those audiences. 

But I shall now ask the reader to judge 
for himself, by the perusal of his Talk, what 
manner of man he was. Of one thing, how- 
ever, I must warn him, which is that in the 
age of Selden theological questions entered 
into nearly every subject discussed; so he 
must not be surprised to find a good deal of 
this in Selden's talk. 

Of the whole Table-Talk I have omitted 
about one fifth, which consists of passages, 
chiefly on ecclesiastical matters, that are now 
of little or no interest to the modern reader. 
Mr. Singer's foot-notes I have indicated by 
the letter S, and the few observations made 
by the writer I have placed in similar type 
directly after the passages to which they re- 
fer, which will not, I hope, impair the con- 
tinuity or the character of talk which the 

whole possesses. 

^3 



JOHN SELDEN'S 
TABLE-TALK 



TO THE HONORABLE 

MR. JUSTICE HALES, 

ONE OF THE JUDGES OF THE 
COMMON PLEAS, 

AND TO THE MUCH HONORED 

Edward Heywood, John Vaughan, and 
Rowland Jewks, Esqs.* 

Most Worthy Gentleineii : 

Were you not executors to that person who, 
while he Hved, was the glory of the nation, yet 
I am confident anything of his would find ac- 
ceptance with you; and truly the sense and 
notion here is wholly his, and most of the 
words. I had the opportunity to hear his dis- 
course twenty years together; and lest all 
those excellent things that usually fell from 
him might be lost, some of them from time to 



* Milward, or the transcriber, has made strange work with 
the names prefixed to this dedication. "Mr. Justice Hales" 
is, of course, Sir Matthew Hale ; and as he ceased to be one of 
the judges of the Common Pleas on the death of Cromwell in 
1658, the Table-Talk must, therefore, have been prepared for 
publication soon after Selden's death, although it remained in 
MS. until 1689, nine years after that of the compiler. " Hey- 
wood " should be Hey ward, Selden's early friend. " Vaughan " 
was afterward Chief Justice of the Common Pleas.— S. 
67 



Dedication 

time I faithfully committed to writing, which 
here, digested into this method, I humbly 
present to your hands. You will quickly per- 
ceive them to be his by the familiar illustra- 
tions wherewith they are set off, and in which 
way you know he was so happy, that, with a 
marvelous delight to those that heard him, he 
would presently convey the highest points of 
religion, and the most important affairs of 
state, to an ordinary apprehension. 

In reading, be pleased to distinguish times, 
and in your fancy carry along with you the 
when and the why many of these things were 
spoken; this will give them the more life and 
the smarter relish. Tis possible the enter- 
tainment you find in them may render you the 
more inclinable to pardon the presumption of 
Your most obliged and 
most humble servant, 

Rl. MiLWARD. 

68 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Abbeys, Priories 71 

Baptism 72 

Bible, Scripture 72 

Bishops 77 

Bishops out of Parliament 80 

Books, Authors 83 

Ceremony 87 

Changing Sides 87 

Christians 88 

Church 89 

Church of Rome 90 

Clergy 90 

Confession 92 

Competency 93 

Conscience 93 

Consecrated Places 95 

Contracts 96 

Council 97 

Damnation 97 

Devils 98 

Denial, Self loi 

Epitaph 101 

Equity 102 

Evil Speaking 103 

Faith and Works 105 

Free Will 105 

Friars 106 

Friends 106 

Gentlemen 107 

Hall 108 

Hell 108 

Humility 



69 



PAGE 

Idolatry in 

Jevi^s 112 

Invincible Ignorance 114 

Images 114 

Imprisonment 116 

Incendiaries 1 16 

Independency 117 

Interest, Public 118 

Invention, Human 1 19 

Judgments 1 19 

Judge 120 

Juggling 121 

Jurisdiction 121 

Jus Divinum 122 

King 123 

King of England 125 

King, The 126 

Language 127 

Law 128 

Law of Nature 130 

Learning 131 

Lecturers 133 

Libels 134 

Liturgy 134 

Lords, New^ Parliament... 135 

Marriage 135 

Measure of Things 136 

Men, Difference of 137 

Minister Divine 137 

Money 142 

Moral Honesty 144 

Mortgage 145 



Contents 



PAGE 

Number 145 

Oaths 146 

Oracles 148 

Opinion 149 

Parliament 151 

Parson 154 

Patience 154 

Peace 155 

Penance 155 

People 156 

Pleasure 157 

Philosophy 158 

Poetry 159 

Pope 164 

Popery 166 

Power, State 167 

Prayer 168 

Preaching 170 

Predestination 177 

Preferment 177 

Presbytery 180 

Priests of Rome 182 

Prophecies 183 

Proverbs 183 

Question 183 

Reason 184 

Retaliation 185 

Reverence 185 



PAGE 

Residency, Non 185 

Religion 186 

Sabbath 192 

Sacrament .... 192 

Salvation 193 

State 193 

Superstition 194 

Ship- Money , 194 

Thanksgiving 195 

Tithes 196 

Trade 198 

Tradition 198 

Transubstantiation 199 

Traitor 199 

Truth 200 

Trial 200 

University 202 

Vovv^s 203 

Usury 204 

Uses, Pious 204 

War 205 

Witches 208 

Wife 209 

Wisdom 211 

Wit o 211 

Women 212 

Zealots 213 



70 



THE TABLE-TALK OF 
JOHN SELDEN 



Abbeys, Priories, Etc. 

When the founders of abbeys laid a curse 
upon those that should take away those lands, 
I would fain know what power they had to 
curse me. 'Tis not the curses that come from 
the poor, or from anybody, that hurt me be- 
cause they come from them, but because I do 
something ill against them that deserves God 
should curse me for it. On the other side, 'tis 
not a man's blessing me that makes me 
blessed ; he only declares me to be so ; and if I 
do well I shall be blessed, whether anyone 
bless me or not. 

Henry the Fifth put away the friars, aliens, 
and seized to himself 100,000/. a year; and 
therefore they were not the Protestants only 
that took away Church lands. 

In Queen Elizabeth's time, when all the 
abbeys were pulled down, all good works de- 
faced, then the preachers must cry up justifi- 
cation by faith, not by good works. 
71 



Discourses, or 

Baptism. 

'TwAS a good way to persuade men to be 
cliristened, to tell them that they had a foul- 
ness about them, vis., original sin, that could 
not be washed away but by baptism. 

The baptizing of children, with us, does 
only prepare a child against he comes to be a 
man to understand what Christianity means. 
In the Church of Rome it has this effect — it 
frees children from hell. They say they go 
into Limbus Infantum. It succeeds circum- 
cision, and we are sure the child understood 
nothing of that at eight days old; why then 
may not we as reasonably baptize a child at 
that age? In England of late years I ever 
thought the parson baptized his own fingers 
rather than the child. 

In the primitive times they had godfathers 
to see the children brought up in the Christian 
religion, because, many times, when the fa- 
ther was a Christian the mother was not, and 
sometimes when the mother was a Christian 
the father was not; and therefore they made 
choice of two or more that were Christians to 
see their children brought up in that faith. 

Bible, Scripture. 
'Tis a great question how we know Scrip- 
ture to be Scripture ; whether by the Church 
or by man's private spirit. Let me ask you 
how I know anything; how I know this car- 
pet to be green? First, because somebody 
72 



Table-Talk ^ 

told me it was green: that you call the 
Church, in your way. Then, after I have 
been told it is green, when I see the color 
again I know it to be green ; my own eyes tell 
me it is green : that you call the private spirit. 
The English translation of the Bible is the 
best translation in the world and renders the 
sense of the original best, taking in for the 
English translation the Bishops' Bible* as 
well as King James's. f The translation in 
King James's time took an excellent way. 
That part of the Bible was given to him .who 
was most excellent in such a tongue (as the 
Apocrypha to Andrew Downs) ; and then 
they met together and one read the transla- 
tion, the rest holding in their hands some 
Bible, either of the learned tongues, or 
French, Spanish, Italian, etc. ; if they found 
any fault they spoke ; if not, he read on. 

* The Bishops' Bible, begun soon after Elizabeth's accession 
to the throne by Archbishop Parker and eight bishops, besides 
others. It was published in 1568 with a preface by Parker. — S. 

t King James's. Begun in 1607, published in 161 1. Forty- 
seven of the most learned men in the nation employed on it. 
There is no book so translated, that is, so peculiarly translated, 
considering the purpose it was meant for — general reading. 
Many impressions of English Bibles printed at Amsterdam, and 
more at Edinburgh, in Scotland, were daily brought over 
hither and sold here. Little their volumes, and low their 
prices, as being of bad paper, worse print, little margin, yet 
greater than the care of the corrector — many abominable errata 
being passed therein. Take one instance for all : Jer. iv, 17, 
speaking of the whole commonwealth of Judah, instead of 
" Because she hath been rebellious against me, saith the Lord," 
it is printed (Edinb., 1637), "Because she hath been religious 
against me." — S. 

7Z 



Discourses, or 

There Is no book so translated as the Bible 
for the purpose. If I translate a French book 
into English, I turn it into English phrase, 
not into French English. ''II fait froid:'' I 
say 'tis cold ; not, it makes cold ; but the Bible 
is rather translated into English words than 
into English phrase. The Hebraisms are 
kept, and the phrase of that language is kept ; 
which is well enough, so long as scholars have 
to do with it; but when it comes among the 
common people — Lord, what gear do they 
make of it ! 

Scrutamini Scriptiiras. These two words 
have undone' the world. Because Christ spake 
them to his disciples, therefore we must all, 
men, women, and children, read and interpret 
the Scripture. 

[When Selden said this, I have no doubt he 
had an eye to the many sects that were spring- 
ing up in his time. But it will be a sad day for 
liberty of thought when none but ecclesiastics 
and learned men are allowed to interpret the 
Scriptures. At the present day it is the ecclesi- 
astics themselves, like Dr. Briggs and others, 
who are undermining the faith of the people.] 

Henry the Eighth made a law that all men 
might read the Scripture except servants ; but 
no women except ladies and gentlewomen, 
who had leisure and might ask somebody the 
meaning. The law was repealed in Edward 
the Sixth's days. 

Laymen have best interpreted the hard 
74 



Table-Talk 

places in the Bible, such as Johannes Picus, 
Scaliger, Grotius, Salmasius, Heinsius, etc. 

If you ask which [of these three], Eras- 
mus, Beza, or Grotius, did best upon the New 
Testament, 'tis an idle question ; for they all 
did well in their way. Erasmus broke down 
the first brick, Beza added many things, and 
Grotius added much to him ; in whom we 
liave either something new or something 
heightened that was said before, and so 'twas 
necessary to have them all three. 

The text serves only to guess by ; we must 
satisfy ourselves fully out of the authors that 
lived about those times. 

In interpreting the Scripture, many do as if 
a man should see one have ten pounds, which 
he reckoned by i, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10: 
meaning four was but four units, and five five 
units, etc., and that he had in all but ten 
pounds. The other that sees him takes not the 
figures together as he doth, but picks here and 
there, and thereupon reports, that he hath five 
pounds in one bag, and six pounds in another 
bag, and nine pounds in another bag, etc., 
whereas, in truth, he hath but ten pounds in 
all. So we pick out a text, here and there, to 
make it serve our turn ; whereas if we took it 
all together, and considered what went before 
and what followed after, we should find it 
meant no such thing. 

Make no more allegories in Scripture than 
needs must. The Fathers were too frequent 
75 



Discourses, or 

in them; they, indeed, before they fully un- 
derstood the literal sense, looked out for an 
allegory. The folly whereof you may con- 
ceive thus: Here, at the first sight, appears 
to me in my window a glass and a book; I 
take it for granted 'tis a glass and a book; 
thereupon I go about to tell you what they 
signify : afterward, upon nearer view, they 
prove no such thing ; one is a box made like a 
book, the other is a picture made like a glass ; 
where's now my allegory? 

When men meddle with the literal text the 
question is, where they should stop. In this 
case, a man must venture his discretion, and 
do his best to satisfy himself and others in 
those places where he doubts ; for although 
we call the Scripture the word of God (as it 
is), yet it was writ by a man, a mercenary 
man, whose copy either might be false or he 
might make it false. For example, here were 
a thousand Bibles printed in England with 
the text thus: ''Thou shall commit adultery;" 
the word not left out."^ Might not this text be 
mended ? 



* Archbishop Usher, on his way to preach at St. Paul's Cross, 
entered a bookseller's shop and purchased a London edition of 
the Bible, in which, to his astonishment and dismay, he found 
the text he had selected was omitted. This was the occasion 
of the first complaint on the subject, and inducing further at- 
tention, the king's printers, in 1632, were justly fined ;^3,ooo 
for omitting the word "not" in the seventh commandment. 
During the reign of the Parliament a large impression of the 
Bible was suppressed on account of its errors and corruptions, 
76 



Table-Talk 

The Scripture may have more senses be- 
sides the hteral, because God understands all 
things at once ; but a man's writing has but 
one true sense, which is that which the author 
meant when he writ it. 

When you meet with several readings of the 
text, take heed you admit nothing against the 
tenets of your Church, but do as if you were 
going over a bridge : be sure you hold fast by 
the rail, and then you may dance here and 
there as you please ; be sure you keep to what 
is settled, and then you may flourish upon 
your various lections [readings]. 

Bishops. 

For a bishop to preach, 'tis to do other 
folks' office, as if the steward of the house 
should execute the porter's or the cook's 
place. 'Tis his business to see that they and 
all others about the house perform their duties. 
[This applies to every overseer or executive 
officer — a line of conduct whose efficiency is 
well illustrated by the old saying, "The eye of 
the master can do more than both his hands."] 

That which is thought to have done the 
bishops hurt is their going about to bring 
men to a blind obedience, imposing things 
upon them (though perhaps small and well 
enough) without preparing them, and insinu- 

many of which were the results of design as well as of negli- 
gence. The errors in two of the editions actually amounted 
respectively to 3,600 and 6^000.— Johnson'' s Memoirs ofSelden. 
77 



Discourses, or 

ating into their reasons and fancies. Every 
man loves to know his commander. I wear 
these gloves; but perhaps, if an alderman 
should command me, I should think much to do 
it. What has he to do with me ? Or, if he has, 
peradventure I do not know it. This jump- 
ing upon things at first dash will destroy all. 
To keep up friendship there must be little ad- 
dresses and applications ; whereas bluntness 
spoils all quickly. To keep up the hierarchy, 
there must be little applications made to men ; 
they must be brought on by little and little. 
So in the primitive times the power was 
gained, and so it must be continued. Scaliger 
said of Erasmus : Si minor esse voluerit, ma- 
jor fiiisset. So we may say of the bishops : 
Si minores esse voluerint, majores fuissent. 
[That is : had he desired to be smaller he 
would have been greater. And so of the 
bishops: had they desired to be smaller they 
would have been greater.] 

The bishops were too hasty, else with a dis- 
creet slowness they might have had what they 
aimed at. The old story, of the fellow that 
told the gentleman he might get to such a 
place if he did not ride too fast, would have 
fitted their turn. 

For a bishop to cite an old canon to 
strengthen his new articles is as if a lawyer 
should plead an old statute that has been re- 
pealed — God knows how long. 

Bishops were formerlv one of these two 
78 ' 



Table-Talk 

conditions : either they were bred canonists and 
civihans, sent up and down, embassadors to 
Rome and other parts, and so by their merit 
came to that greatness ; or else great noble- 
men's sons, brothers, and nephews, and so 
born to govern the state. Now they are of a 
low condition, their education nothing of that 
way : they get a living, and then a greater 
living, and then a greater than that, and so 
come to govern. 

Bishops are now unfit to govern because of 
their learning: they are bred up in another 
law ; they run to a text for something done 
among the Jews that nothing concerns Eng- 
land ; 'tis just as if a man would have a kettle, 
and he would not go to our brazier to have it 
made as they make kettles, but he would have 
it made as Hiram made his brasswork, who 
wrought in Solomon's Temple. [How true 
this is of some of the sectaries at the present 
day !] 

To take away bishops' votes is but the be- 
ginning to take them away ; for then they can 
be no longer useful to the king or state. 'Tis 
but the little wimble, to let in the greater 
auger. Objection. But they are but for their 
life, and that makes them always go for the 
king as he will have them. Anszver. This is 
against a double chanty ; for you must always 
suppose a bad king and bad bishops. Then 
again, whether will a man be sooner content 
himself should be made a slave, or his son 
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after him ? When we talk of our children we 
mean ourselves. Besides, they that have pos- 
terity are more obliged to the king than they 
that are only for themselves, in all the reason 
in the world. 

How shall the clergy be in the Parliament 
if the bishops are taken away? Answer. By 
the laity; because the bishops, in whom the 
rest of the clergy are included, assent to the 
taking away their own votes, by being in- 
volved in the major part of the House. This 
follows naturally. 

The bishops being put out of the House, 
whom will they lay the fault upon now? 
When the dog is beat out of the room, where 
will they lay the smell ? 

Bishops Out of Parliament. 

Though some of the bishops pretend to be 
jure divino, yet the practice of the kingdom 
has ever been otherwise; for whatever bish- 
ops do, otherwise than the law permits, West- 
minster Hall can control, or send them to 
absolve, etc. 

He that goes about to prove bishops jure 
divino'^ does as a man that, having a sword, 

* Who would not have laughed to hear a Presbyterian ob- 
serve, from the first chapter of Genesis, first verse, that, whilst 
Moses relates what God made, he speaks nothing of bishops ? 
by which it was evident that bishops were not of divine insti- 
tution — a conceit as ridiculous as that of a priest who, finding 
Maria spoken of, signifying seas, did brag that he had found 
the Virgin Mary named in the Old Testament. — Religio Stoici^ 
J2mo, Edinb., 1663, p. 77. 

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shall strike it against an anvil : if he strike it 
awhile there he may peradventure loosen it, 
though it be never so well riveted. 'Twill 
serve to strike another sword, or cut flesh, but 
not against an anvil. 

If you should say you hold your land by 
Moses's or God's law, and would try it by 
that, you may perhaps lose, but by the law of 
the kingdom you are sure of it. So may the 
bishops by this plea of jure divino lose all. 
The Pope had as good a title by the law of 
England as could be had, had he not left that 
and claimed by power from God. 

There is no government enjoined by exam- 
ple, but by precept ; it does not follow we must 
have bishops still because we have had them 
so long. They are equally mad who say bish- 
ops are so jure divino that they must be con- 
tinued, and they who say they are so anti- 
christian that they must be put away. All is 
as the state pleases. 

If there be no bishops there must be some- 
thing . else wdiich has the power of bishops, 
though it be in many; and then had you not 
as good keep them? If j^ou will have no 
half crowns, but only single pence, yet thirty 
single pence are half a crown ; and then had 
you not as good keep both? But the bishops 
have done ill. 'Twas the men, not the func- 
tion. As if you should say, you would have 
no more half crowns because they were 
stolen ; wdien the truth is they were not stolen 
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because they were half crowns, but because 
they were money, and hght in a thief's hand.* 

They that would pull down the bishops, 
and erect a new way of government, do as he 
that pulls down an old house and builds an- 
other in another fashion. There's a great deal 
of do, and a great deal of trouble : the old 
rubbish must be carried away, and new mate- 
rials must be brought ; workmen must be pro- 
vided — and perhaps the old one would have 
served as well. 

'Twill be great discouragement to scholars 
that bishops should be put down : for now the 
father can say to his son, and the tutor to his 
pupil, "Study hard, and you shall have vocein 
et scdem in Parlianicnto ;" then it must be, 
"Study hard, and you shall have a hundred a 
year if you please your parish." Objection. 
But they that enter into the ministry for pre- 
ferment are like Judas, that looked after the 
bag. Anszver. It may be so, if they turn 
scholars at Judas's age ; but what arguments 
Vv'ill they use to persuade them to follow their 
books while they are young? [What argu- 
ments have we here in the United States? 
Wealth and social position; of positions of 

* Dr. Aikin has observed that Selden steered a middle course, 
as one who was an enemy to the usurpations of ecclesiastical 
power, yet was friendly to the discipline of the Church of Eng- 
land. He certainly strove in the House of Commons to pre- 
vent the abolition of episcopacy. It is evident that he disliked 
the Presbyterians, but it would be difficult to say what Church 
would have had his entire approbation. — S. 
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honor there are few. Do we now consider it 
a high honor to become a member of Con- 
gress? Would it be a great incentive to an 
American boy to tell him that if he studied 
hard he would become a bishop? Times have 
changed indeed. But we must not forget that 
in the English Episcopal Church bishops are, 
practically, appointed by the government, and 
the government rarely appoints an inefficient 
man.] 

Books, Authors. 

The giving a bookseller his price for his 
books has this advantage : he that will do so 
shall have the refusal of whatsoever comes to 
his hand, and so by that means get many 
things which otherwise he never should have 
seen. 

Popish books teach and inform ; what we 
know we know much out of them. The 
Fathers, Church story, schoolmen, all may 
pass for Popish books ; and if you take away 
them, what learning will you leave? Besides, 
v/ho must be judge? The customer* or the 
waiter? If he disallows a book it must not 
be brought into the kingdom; then the Lord 
have mercy upon all scholars ! These Puritan 
preachers, if they have anything good, they 
have it out of Popish books, though they will 

* Customer, that is, the officer of the customs. The importa- 
tion of Popish books was contraband ; it was one of the charges 
against Laud that he had suffered the customs to let pass many 
Popish books. — S. 

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not acknowledge it for fear of displeasing the 
people. He is a poor divine that cannot sever 
the good from the bad. 

'Tis good to have translations, because they 
serve as a comment, so far as the judgment of 
one man goes. 

In answering a book, 'tis best to be short; 
otherwise he that I write against will suspect 
I intend to weary him, not to satisfy him. 
Besides, in being long I shall give my adver- 
sary a huge advantage; somewhere or other 
he will pick a hole. 

In quoting of books quote such authors as 
are usually read ; others you may read, for 
your own satisfaction, but not name them.''' 

Quoting of authors is most for matter of 
fact, and then I cite them as I would produce 
a witness : sometimes for a free expression ; 
and then I give the author his due, and gain 
myself praise by reading him. 

To quote a modern Dutchman, where I 
may use a classic author, is as if I were to 
justify my reputation, and neglect all persons 
of note and quality that know me, and bring 
the testimonial of the scullion into the kitchen. 

[Remember, this was said over two centuries 

* We are told in the Walpoliana that Bentley would not even 
allow that a book was worthy to be read that could not be 
quoted. " Having found his son reading a novel, he said, 
' Why read a book that you cannot quote ? ' " Selden's own con- 
duct was at variance with his dictum, for in his own works he 
freely quotes from all sources, many of them the most recondite, 
and certainly not such as " are usually read." — S. 
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ago ; and yet it does not appear that the Dutch 
have, since that time, made very great ad- 
vances or acquired any great distinction in 
Hterature. Mr. Gosse, who has written a his- 
tory of Dutch Hterature for the Encyclopae- 
dia Britannica, declares that ''no very great 
genius has arisen in Holland in any branch of 
literature." I have always thought that a 
low-lying, monotonous, watery country has a 
less stimulating effect on the minds of its in- 
habitants than a high-placed, diversified, 
mountainous country. He who is born in 
such a country should be grateful to God for 
the blessing. Perhaps Selden had also in mind, 
when he uttered the above opinion about "a 
modern Dutchman,'' his famous antagonist, 
Hugo Grotius, whose treatise. Mare Liheriim, 
in which the author endeavored to prove that 
the ocean is free to all and cannot be appro- 
priated by any one nation, Selden successfully 
controverted in his treatise, Mare Claiisum. 
. . . Touching translations, which Selden 
thought it good to have, Emerson declares that 
in his later years he never read an original 
wherever he could find a translation. Shake- 
speare,! am sure, followed the same plan ; hence 
his freedom from the pedantic, stiff style of 
many of his contemporaries ; for much reading 
of foreign languages impairs an author's Eng- 
lish style, as it certainly did Selden's. It is the 
thought or the facts a reader wants, which, 
though not so finely expressed in a translation, 
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Discourses, or 

are more readily assimilated by the reader 
when found in his native tongue. I do not say 
a word against the learning of foreign lan- 
guages, which is an indispensable thing for 
him who would be a good writer or speaker. 
. . . Dr. Johnson, who preferred to be 
thoroughly scored by the critics rather than not 
to be mentioned at all, used to say that when 
he got hold of a book he tried "to tear the 
heart out of it !" There are so many books 
nowadays, this is the only way to read many 
of them. Get at the main thing the author 
wants to say or to solve, which may some- 
times be expressed in a sentence, and let the 
rest go. Some public men keep a secretary 
or reader expressly for the purpose of boiling 
down for them the contents of current books 
to a few sentences. Mr. Spurgeon's secretary 
did more : he searched ancient and modern 
authors to furnish him with the materials he 
wanted. Lord Macaulay used literally to 
U'Glk through a book ; he would turn leaf 
after leaf, simply glancing at a sentence here 
and there, and in an hour he had got ''the 
heart of it!" ''Some books are to be tasted; 
others to be szvaliowed; and some few to be 
chezved and digested/' is Bacon's well-known 
advice. Has not every man an affinity for 
certain books, as he has for certain persons? 
Read those for which you have an affinity; 
this affinity will grow and expand in time. I 
do not believe in the best hundred books for 
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Table-Talk 

everybody, any more than the best hundred 
dishes.] 

Ceremony. 

Ceremony keeps up all things. 'Tis like 
a penny glass to a rich spirit, or some excel- 
lent water; without it the water were spilt, 
the spirit lost. [That is, those powerful little 
attentions, the doffing of the hat, etc., by which 
alone many men succeed.] 

Of all people ladies have no reason to cry 
down ceremony ; for they take themselves 
slighted without it. And were they not used 
with ceremony, with compliments and ad- 
dresses, with bowing and kissing of hands, 
they were the pitifulest creatures in the 
world. But yet methinks to kiss their hands 
after their lips, as some do, is like little boys 
that after they eat the apple fall to the paring, 
out of a love they have to the apple. 

Changing Sides. 

'Tis the trial of a man to see if he will 
change his side, and if he be so weak as to 
change once he will change again. Your 
country fellows have a way to try if a man be 
wxak in the hams, by coming behind him and 
giving him a blow unawares : if he bend once 
he will bend again. 

The lords that fall from the king after they 

have got estates by base flattery at court, and 

now pretend conscience, do as a vintner, that, 

when he first sets up, you mav bring vour 

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companion to his house, and do your things 
there ; but when he grows rich he turns con- 
scientious, and will sell no wine upon the Sab- 
bath day. 

After Luther had made a combustion in 
Germany about religion he was sent to, by the 
Pope, to be taken off, and offered any prefer- 
ment in the Church that he would make 
choice of. Luther answered, if he had of- 
fered half as much at first he would have ac- 
cepted it ; but now he had gone so far he could 
not come back. In truth he had made himself 
a greater thing than they could make him ; the 
German princes courted him ; he was become 
the author of a sect ever after to be called 
Lutherans. So have our preachers done, those 
that are against the bishops ; they have made 
themselves greater with the people than they 
can be made the other way; and therefore 
there is the less probability in bringing them 
off. 

Christians. 

In the High Church of Jerusalem the 
Christians w^ere but another sect of Jews that 
did believe the Messias was come. To be 
called was nothing else but to become a 
Christian, .to have the name of a Christian, 
it being their own language; for, among the 
Jews, when they made a doctor of law 'twas 
said he was called. 

The Turks tell their people of a heaven 
where there is sensible pleasure, but of a hell 



Table-Talk 

where they shall suffer they don't know what. 
The Christians quite invert this order; they 
tell us of a hell where we shall feel sensible 
pain, but of a heaven where we shall enjoy we 
can't tell what. 

Church. 

Heretofore the kingdom let the Church 
alone, let them do what they would, because 
they had something else to think of, vi::^., 
wars ; but now, in time of peace, we begin to 
examine all things, will have nothing but what 
we like ; grow dainty and wanton. Just as in 
a family : when the heir uses to go a-hunting 
he never considers how his meal is dressed — 
takes a bit and away ; but when he stays 
within, then he grows curious ; he does not 
like this, nor does he like that ; he will have 
his meat dressed his own way, or peradven- 
ture will dress it himself. 

It hath ever been the game of the Church, 
when the king will let the Church have no 
power,' to cry down the king and cry up the 
Church ; but when the Church can make use 
of the king's power, then she tries to bring all 
under the king's prerogative. The Catholics 
of England go one way, and the court clergy 
another. 

A glorious Church is like a magnificent 
feast ; there is all the variety that may be, but 
everyone chooses out a dish or two that he 
likes and lets the rest alone : how glorious so- 
ever the Church is, everyone chooses out of it 
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Discourses^ or 

his own religion, by which he governs him- 
self and lets the rest alone. 

The laws of the Church are most favorable 
to the Church, because they were the Church's 
own making; as the heralds are the best gen- 
tlemen, because they make their own pedigree. 

Church of Rome. 

Before a juggler's tricks are discovered we 
admire him, and give him money, but after- 
ward we care not for them ; so 'twas before 
the discovery of the juggling of the Church 
of Rome. 

Catholics say, we, out of our charity, believe 
they of the Church of Rome may be saved, 
but they do not believe so of us ; therefore 
their Church is better according to ourselves. 
First : some of them, no doubt, believe as well 
of us as we do of them, but they must not say 
so. Besides, is that an argument their Church 
is better than ours because it has less charity? 

One of the Church of Rome will not come 
to our prayers ; does that argue he doth 
not like them? I would fain see a Catholic 
leave his dinner because a nobleman's chap- 
lain says grace. Nor haply would he leave 
the prayers of the Church if going to Church 
were not made a mark of distinction between 
a Protestant and a Papist. 

Clergy. 
Though a clergyman have no faults of his 

own, yet the faults of the whole tribe shall be 
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Table-Talk 

laid upon him, so that he shall be sure not to 
lack. 

The clergy would have us believe them 
against our own reason, as the woman would 
have had her husband against his own eyes: 
What! will you believe your own eyes before 
your own sweet wife! 

The condition of the clergy toward their 
prince and the condition of the physician is 
all one. The physicians tell the prince they 
have agarick and rhubarb, good for him and 
good for his subjects' bodies; upon this he 
gives them leave to use it; but if it prove 
naught, then away with it ; they shall use it no 
more. So the clergy tell the prince they have 
physic good for his soul, and good for the 
souls of his people ; upon that he admits them ; 
but when he finds by experience they both 
trouble him and his people he will have no 
more to do with them. What is that to them, 
or anybody else, if a king will not go to 
heaven? 

A clergyman goes not a dram further than 
this: you ought to obey your prince in gen- 
eral. If he does he is lost. How to obey him 
you must be informed by those whose profes- 
sion it is to tell you. The parson of the Tower, 
a good, discreet man, told Dr. Mosely (who 
was sent to me and the rest of the gentlemen 
committed the 30? Caroli, to persuade us to 
submit to the king) that he found no such 
words as Parliament, Habeas Corpus, Return, 
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Tower, etc., neither in the Fathers, nor in the 
schoolmen^ nor in the text; and therefore for 
his part he beUeved he understood nothing of 
the business. A satire upon all those clergy- 
men that rrieddle with matters they do not 
understand. 

The clergy and the laity together are never 
like to do well; 'tis as if a man were to make 
an excellent feast, and should have his apoth- 
ecary and his physician come into the kitchen; 
the cooks, if they were let alone, would make 
excellent meat; but then comes the apothe- 
cary, and he puts rhubarb into one sauce and 
agarick into another sauce. Chain up the 
clergy on both sides. [Chain up both sides; 
i. e., court clergy and Puritan. Who will say 
that the makers of our Constitution did not 
learn something from Selden and his C07i- 
freresf The shoemaker did well when he 
criticised the shoe in Apelles's picture: but 
when he went farther, the painter exclaimed, 
"Shoemaker, stick to your last!" The clergy 
should not pretend to craft in statesmanship.] 

Confession. 

In time of Parliament it used to be one of 

the first things the House did, to petition the 

king that his confessor might be removed, as 

fearing either his power with the king, or else 

lest he should reveal to the Pope what the 

House was doing; as no doubt he did when 

the Catholic cause was concerned. 
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The difference between us and the Papists 
is, we both allow contrition, but the Papists 
make confession a part of contrition ; they say 
a man is not sufficiently contrite till he confess 
his sins to a priest. 

Why should I think a priest will not reveal 
confession? I am sure he will do anything 
that is forbidden him; haply not so often as I. 
The utmost punishment is deprivation; and 
how can it be proved that ever any man re- 
vealed confession, when there is no witness? 
And no man can be witness in his own cause. 
A mere gullery. There was a time when 'twas 
public in the Church; and that is much 
against their auricular confession. 

Competency. 

That which is a competency for one man is 
not enough for another, no more than that 
which will keep one man warm will keep an- 
other man warm; one man can go in doublet 
and hose, when another man cannot be with- 
out a cloak and yet have no more clothes than 
is necessary for him. 

Conscience. 

He that hath a scrupulous conscience is like 
a horse that is not well wayed, he starts at 
every bird that flies out of the hedge. 

A knowing man will do that which a tender 
conscience man dares not do by reason of his 
ignorance; the other knows there is no hurt; 
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as a child is afraid to go into the dark when a 
man is not, because he knows there is no 
danger. 

If we once come to have that outloose, as 
to pretend conscience against law, who knows 
what inconvenience may follow? For thus: 
Suppose an Anabaptist comes and takes my 
horse ; I sue him ; he tells me he did according 
to his conscience; his conscience tells him all 
things are common among the saints, what 
is mine is his; therefore you do ill to make 
such a law, "If any man takes another's 
horse he shall be hanged." What can I say 
to this man? He does according to his con- 
science. Why is not he as honest a man as 
he that pretends a ceremony established by 
law is against his conscience? Generally, to 
pretend conscience against law is dangerous; 
in some cases haply we may. 

Some men make it a case of conscience 
whether a man may have a pigeon house, be- 
cause his pigeons eat other folks' corn. But 
there is no such thing as conscience in the 
business; the matter is whether he be a man 
of such quality that the state allows him to 
have a dove house; if so, there's an end of the 
business; his pigeons have a right to eat 
where they please themselves.* 

* To have a dove house. A lord of a manor may build a 
dovecot upon his land, parcel of his manor ; but a tenant of 
the manor cannot do it without license. (3 Salkeld, 248.) But 
any freeholder may build a dovecot on his own ground. (C. 
Jac. 382, 490.) — Bunt's Justice. 
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Consecrated Places. 

The Jews had a peculiar way of consecrat- 
ing things to God which we have not. 

Under the law, God, who was Master of all, 
made choice of a temple to worship in, where 
he was more especially present; just as the 
master of the house, who owns all the house, 
makes choice of one chamber to lie in, which 
is called the master's chamber. But under 
the Gospel there was no such thing; temples 
and churches are set apart for the conven- 
iency of men to worship in; they cannot meet 
upon the point of a needle; but God himself 
makes no choice. 

All things are God's already; we can give 
him no right, by consecrating any, that he 
had not before, only we set it apart to his serv- 
ice. Just as a gardener brings his lord and 
master a basket of apricots, and presents 
them; his lord thanks him, perhaps gives him 
something for his pains, and yet the apricots 
were as much his lord's before as now. 

What is consecrated is given to some 
particular man to do God service, not given 
to God, but given to man to serve God; and 
there's not anything but some men or other have 
it in their power to dispose of as they please. 
The saying things consecrated cannot be taken 
away makes men afraid of consecration. 

Yet consecration has this power: when a 
man has consecrated anything to God he can- 
not of himself take it away. 
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Contracts. 

If our fathers have lost their Hberty, why 
may not we labor to regain it? Answer. We 
must look to the contract; if that be rightly 
made we must stand to it;* if we once grant 
we may recede from contracts upon any in- 
conveniency that may afterward happen, we 
shall have no bargain kept. If I sell you a 
horse, and do not like my bargain, I will have 
my horse again. 

Keep your contracts ; so far a divine goes ; 
but how to make our contracts is left to our- 
selves; and as we agree upon the conveying 
of this house, or that land, so it must be. If 
you ofifer me a hundred pounds for my glove, 
I tell you what my glove is, a plain glove, pre- 
tend no virtue in it, the glove is my own, I 
profess not to sell gloves, and we agree for a 
hundred pounds, I do not know why I may 
not with a safe conscience take it. The want 
of that common obvious distinction of jus 
praeceptivum, and jus perrnissivum,] does 
much trouble men. 



* It will be evident that the force of this observation must de- 
pend upon the vi^ord rightly. But hear the judicious Barrow : 
" An indefectible power cannot be settled by man, because 
there is no power ever extant at one time greater than there is 
at another ; so that whatever power we may raise, the other 
may demolish, there being no bonds whereby the present time 
may bind all posterity." — S. 

^Jus permissz'vum, etc. The law that enjoins, and the law 
that suffers. *' If this doth authorize usury, which before was 
hvX permissive ^^"^ etc. — Bacon. 

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Lady Kent articled with Sir Edward Her- 
bert that he should come to her when she 
sent for him and stay with her as long as she 
would have him, to which he set his hand; 
then he articled with her that he should go 
away when he pleased and stay away as long 
as he pleased, to which she set her hand.* 
This is the epitome of all the contracts in the 
world, betwixt man and man, betwixt prince 
and subject; they keep them as long as they 
like them and no longer. 

Council. 

They talk (but blasphemously enough) 
that the Holy Ghost is president of their gen- 
eral councils, when the truth is the odd man is 
the Holy Ghost. 

Damnation. 

If the physician sees you eat anything that 
is not good for your body, to keep you from 
it he cries 'tis poison; if the divine sees you 



* Sir Edward Herbert, Solicitor and Attorney General to 
Charles the First, and for some time Lord Keeper to Charles 
the Second, when in exile. Dr. Aikin says that a legal friend 
suggested to him that Sir Edward Herbert, who was an eminent 
lawyer, was probably retained for his advice by Lady Kent at 
an annual salary; and he produced examples of deeds granted 
for payments on the same account, one of them as late as the 
year 1715. Hence it would appear that the lady had a great 
deal of law business on her hands, which would render the 
domestic counsel of such a person as Selden very valuable to 
her.— S. 

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do anything that is hurtful for your soul, to 
keep you from it he cries you are damned. 

To preach long, loud, and damnation is the 
way to be cried up. We love a man that 
damns us, and we run after him again to save 
us. If a man had a sore leg, and he should 
go to an honest, judicious surgeon, and he 
should only bid him keep it warm, and anoint 
with such an oil (an oil well known) that 
would do the cure, haply he would not much 
regard him, because he knows the medicine 
beforehand an ordinary medicine. But if he 
should go to a surgeon that should tell him, 
''Your leg will gangrene within three days, 
and it must be cut ofif, and you will die, unless 
you do something that I could tell you," what 
listening there would be to this man! ''O, for 
the Lord's sake, tell me what this is; I will 
give you anything for your pains." 

Devils. 

Why have we none possessed with devils in 
England? The old answer is, the Protestants 
the devil hath already, and the Papists are so 
holy he dares not meddle with them. 

Casting out devils is mere juggling; they 
never cast out any but what they first cast in. 
They do it where, for reverence, no man shall 
dare to examine it; they do it in a corner, in a 
mortise hole, not in the market place. They 
do nothing but what may be done by art; they 
make the devil fly out of the window in the 
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likeness of a bat or a rat; why do they not 
hold him? Why in the likeness of a bat, or a 
rat, or some creature? That is, why not in 
some shape we paint him in, with claws and 
horns? By this trick they gain much, gain 
upon men's fancies, and so are reverenced; 
and certainly if the priest deliver me from him 
that is my most deadly enemy I have all the 
reason in the world to reverence him. Objec- 
tion. But, if this be juggling, why do they 
punish impostors ? Aiiszvcr. For great reason : 
because they do not play their part well, 
and for fear others should discover them: 
and so all of them ought to be of the same 
trade. 

A person of quality came to my chamber in 
the Temple, and told me he had two devils in 
his head (I wondered what he meant), and 
just at that time one of them bid him kill me: 
with that I began to be afraid, and thought he 
was mad. He said he knew I could cure him, 
and therefore entreated me to give him some- 
thing; for he was resolved he would go to no- 
body else. I, perceiving what an opinion he 
had of me, and that 'twas only melancholy 
that troubled him, took him in hand; war- 
ranted him, if he would follow my directions, 
to cure him in a short time. I desired him to 
let me be alone about an hour, and then to 
come again, which he was very willing to. In 
the meantime I got a card, and lapped it up 
handsome in a piece of taffeta, and put strings 
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to the taffeta, and when he came gave it him 
to hang about his neck; withal charged him 
that he should not disorder himself neither 
with eating or drinking, but eat very little of 
supper, and say his prayers duly when he 
went to bed, and I made no question but he 
would be well in three or four days. Within 
that time I went to dinner to his house, and 
asked him how he did? He said he was much 
better, but not perfectly well, for in truth he 
had not dealt clearly with me. He had four 
devils in his head, and he perceived two of 
them were gone, with that which I had given 
him, but the other two troubled him still. 
Well, said I, I am glad two of them are gone; 
I make no doubt but to get away the other 
two likewise. So I gave him another thing 
to hang about his neck. Three days after he 
came to me to my chamber and professed he 
was now as well as ever he was in his life, and 
did extremely thank me for the great care I 
had taken of him. I, fearing lest he might 
relapse into the like distemper, told him that 
there was none but myself and one physician 
more, in the whole town, that could cure 
devils in the head, and that was Dr. Harvey"^ 
(whom I had prepared), and wished him, if 
ever he found himself ill in my absence, to go 
to him, for he could cure his disease as well as 

* Doubtless Dr. William Harvey (1578-1657), discoverer of 
the circulation of the blood, who was for years a practicing 
physician in London. — W. 



Table-Talk 

myself. The gentleman lived many years and 
was never troubled after. 

Self-Denial. 

Tis much the doctrine of the times that 
men should not please themselves, but deny 
themselves everything they take delight in; 
not look upon beauty, wear no good clothes, 
eat no good meat, etc., which seems the great- 
est accusation that can be upon the Maker 
of all good things. If they be not to be 
used, why did God make them? The truth 
is, they that preach against them cannot make 
use of them themselves; and then again, they 
get esteem by seeming to condemn them. But 
mark it while you live, if they do not please 
themselves as much as they can; and we live 
more by example than precept. [We show 
our lives more by what we do than what we 
say. Here, evidently, Selden had in mind 
some of the severe doctrines of the Puritans. 
When Shakespeare made Sir Toby Belch ex- 
claim to Malvolio, who is represented as "a 
kind of Puritan," "Dost thou think, because 
thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes 
and ale?" he evidently had the same doctrines 
in mind.] 

Epitaph. 

An Epitaph must be made fit for the person 
for whom it is made. For a man to say all 
the excellent things that can be said upon one, 
and call that his Epitaph, is as if a painter 



Discourses, or 

should make the handsomest face he can pos- 
sibly make, and say 'twas my picture. This 
holds in a funeral sermon. 

[Some wag wrote on a churchyard gate: 
''Here lie the dead, and here the living lie." 
It is right to say all the good you can of the 
dead (or of the living) ; but never anything 
false or fulsome.] 

Equity. 

Equity, in law, is the same that the spirit 
is in religion: what everyone pleases to make 
it. Sometimes they go according to con- 
science, sometimes according to law, some- 
times according to the rule of court. 

Equity is a roguish thing: for law we have 
a measure, know what to trust to; equity is 
according to the conscience of him that is 
chancellor, and as that is larger or narrower, 
so is equity. 'Tis all one as if they should 
make the standard for the measure we call a 
foot, a chancellor's foot; what an uncertain 
measure would this be! One chancellor has 
a long foot, another a short foot, a third an 
indifferent foot. 'Tis the same thing in the 
chancellor's conscience. 

That saying, "Do as you would be done 
to," is often misunderstood; for 'tis not thus 
meant that I, a private man, should do to you, 
a private man, as I would have you to me, but 
do as we have agreed to do one to another by 
public agreement. If the prisoner should ask 

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the judge whether he would be content to be 
hanged, were he in his case, he would answer 
No. Then, says the prisoner, do as you would 
be done to. Neither of them must do as pri- 
vate men, but the judge must do by him as 
they have publicly agreed; that is, both judge 
and prisoner have consented to a law that, if 
either of them steal, he shall be hanged. 

Evil-Speaking. 

He that speaks ill of another, commonly, 
before he is aware, makes himself such a one 
as he speaks against; for if he had civility or 
breeding he would forbear such kind of 
language. 

A gallant man is above ill words; an ex- 
ample we have in the old Lord of Salisbury, 
who was a great wise man. Stone had called 
some lord about court, Fool; the lord com- 
plains, and has Stone whipped. Stone cries, 
"I might have called my Lord of Salisbury 
Fool often enough before he would have had 
me whipped."* 

* Whipping was the punishment generally inflicted. Lear 
threatens his fool with the whip, " Everyone knows," says 
Mr. Douce, "the disgraceful conduct of Archbishop Laud to 
poor Archee. As Laud was proceeding to the council the 
jester accosted him with, ' Wha's foule now ? doth not your 
grace hear the news from Striveling about the liturgy?' This 
was not to be pardoned either by the prelate or his master, and 
the records of the council, March ii, 1637-8, tell us that Archi- 
bald Armstrong, the king's fool, for certain scandalous words 
of a high nature spoken by him against his grace the Lord 
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Discourses, or 

Speak not ill of a great enemy, but rather 
give him good words, that he may use you 
the better if you chance to fall into his hands. 
The Spaniard did this when he was dying. 
His confessor told him (to work him to re- 
pentance) how the devil tormented the wicked 
that went to hell: the Spaniard, replying, 
called the devil "my lord:" *T hope my lord 
the devil is not so cruel." His confessor re- 
proved him. ''Excuse me," said the Don, 
''for calling him so; I know not into whose 
hands I may fall, and if I happen into his I 
hope he will use me the better for giving him 
good words." [This story has been para- 
phrased in various ways. One of these para- 
phrases represents a poor sailor who, when 
the ship is sinking, prays now to God, now to 
the devil ; and upon being asked the reason, 
replied that he did not know into whose 
hands he would fall, and wished to be on 
good terms with both !] 



Archbishop of Canterbury, shall have his coat pulled over his 
head, and be discharged the king's service, and banished the 
court." (See Rushworth, part ii, vol. i, p. 471.) The haughty 
Duke D'Espernon was, however, more discreet ; his Gascon 
accent was a constant source of raillery on the part of Maret, 
the fool of Lewis XIII, whose talent lay in mimicry. Richelieu 
admonished the duke to get rid of his provincial tones, at the 
same time counterfeiting his manner, and sarcastically entreated 
him not to take the advice in bad part. " Why should I," re- 
plied the duke, "when I bear as much every day from the 
king's fool, who mocks me in your presence?" — Vig7ieul de 
MarviUe^ Mela7tges, ii, 50. — S. 

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Faith and Works. 

'TwAS an unhappy division that has been 
made between faith and works. Though in 
my intellect I may divide them, just as in the 
candle I know there is both light and heat; 
but yet put out the candle, and they are both 
gone; one remains not without the other. So 
'tis betwixt faith and works. Nay, in a right 
conception, faith is works; for if I believe a 
thing because I am commanded, that is works. 

[Selden would have been delighted with 
the story of the boatman who, having to ferry 
over a river two passengers who constantly 
disputed about faith and works, put the word 
faith on one of his oars and zvorks on the 
other; then when he had got -out into the 
stream, he took in the faith oar and pulled the 
boat round and round with the zvorks oar ; then 
he did likewise with the other. "Now," said 
he, taking hold of both oars, ''see how finely 
they work together!"] 

Free Will. 
The Puritans, who will allow no free will 
at all, but God does all, yet will allow the sub- 
ject his liberty to do or not to do, notwith- 
standing the king, the God upon earth. The 
Arminians, who hold we have free will, yet 
say, when we come to the king there must be 
all obedience, and no liberty to be stood for. 
[The Puritans were decidedly the bolder and 
more reasonable logicians ; for though God is 
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infallible, the king, "the God upon earth," is 
not.] 

Friars. 

The friars say they possess nothing: whose 
then are the lands they hold? Not their su- 
perior's; he hath vowed poverty as well as 
they. Whose then? To answer this 'twas 
decreed they should say they were the Pope's. 
And why must the friars be more perfect than 
the Pope himself ? 

If there had been no friars, Christendom 
might have continued quiet, and things 
remained at a stay. 

If there had been no lecturers, which suc- 
ceed the friars in their way, the Church of 
England might have stood and flourished at 
this day. 

Friends. 

Old friends are best. King James used to 
call for his old shoes; they were easiest for 
his feet. [Goldsmith, in She Stoops to Con- 
quer, makes one of his characters say : ''I love 
everything that's old — old friends, old man- 
ners, old books, old wine." Nowadays when 
an employe is getting old the fashion is to 
shove him aside, to shelve him — age, they say, 
is fast becoming a crime. Few old men let 
their beards grow. Is the respect, the rever- 
ence for age decreasing? The best mercan- 
tile houses in England pension an old employe. 
Is this so here? Are only old pictures — pos- 
sibly counterfeits — worthy of esteem?] 
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Table- Talk 

Gentlemen. 

What a gentleman is 'tis hard with us to 
define. In other countries he is known by 
his privileges; in Westminster Hall he is one 
that is reputed one; in the Court of Honor, he 
that hath arms. The king cannot make a 
gentleman of blood. What have you said? 
Nor God Almighty: but he can make a gen- 
tleman by creation. If you ask, which is the 
better of these two? civilly, the gentleman of 
blood; morally, the gentleman by creation 
may be the better; for the other may be a 
debauched man, this a person of worth. 

Gehtlemen have ever been more temperate 
in their religion than the common people, as 
having more reason; the others running in a 
hurry. In the beginning of Christianity the 
Fathers writ Contra gentes and Contra Gen- 
tiles; they were all one : but after all were Chris- 
tians the better sort of people still retained 
the name of Gentiles throughout the four 
provinces of the Roman Empire; as Gentil- 
homme in French, Gentil-huomo in Italian, 
Gentil-hombre in Spanish, and Gentil-man in 
English; and they, no question, being persons 
of quality, kept up those feasts which we bor- 
row from the Gentiles; as Christmas, Candle- 
mas, May Day, etc., continuing what was not 
directly against Christianity, which the com- 
mon people would never have endured. 

[If gentleman was hard to define in Selden's 
time, what shall we say of it to-day? We are 
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Discourses, or 

all gentlemen and ladies in the United States. 
But since the forelady and saleslady, the gen- 
tleman who digs the graves and the gentle- 
man who drives the hackney coach, have 
taken possession of these words, plain man 
and woman are now coming into favor among 
the better class of people. I heard a child 
exclaim in the street the other day, "Look at 
that drunken lady!"] 

Hall. 

The hall was the place where the great lord 
used to eat (wherefore else were the halls 
made so big?), where he saw all his servants 
and tenants about him. He ate not in pri- 
vate except in time of sickness : when once he 
became a thing cooped up all his greatness 
was spoiled. Nay, the king himself used to 
eat in the hall, and his lords sat with him, and 
then he understood men. 

[In order clearly to realize this, let the 
reader recall the supper of Cedric the Saxon 
at Rotherwood, where the Templar met 
Ivanhoe.] 

Hell. 

There are two texts for Christ's descend- 
ing into hell:* the one Psalm xvi, the other 
Acts ii, where the Bible that was in use when 

* TAe descent into Hell. For much upon this controverted 
point see the Appendix to Parr's Life of Usher, p. 23 et seq. 
Archbishop Usher's opinion was very much that expressed by 
Selden.— S. 

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the Thirty-nine Articles were made has it 
hell. But the Bible that was in Queen Eliza- 
beth's time, when the Articles were con- 
firmed, reads it grave; and so it continued till 
the new translation in King James's time, and 
then 'tis hell again. But by this we may 
gather the Church of England declined as 
much as they could the descent, otherwise 
they never would have altered the Bible. 

He descended into hell. This may be the 
interpretation of it: he may be dead and 
buried, then his soul ascended into heaven. 
Afterward he descended again into hell,* that 
is, into the grave, to fetch his body, and to rise 
again. The ground of this interpretation is 
taken from the Platonic learning, who held a 
metempsychosis, and when the soul did de- 
scend from heaven to take another body they 
called it KarafidGiv slg dSrjv ; taking ddrjg for the 
lower world, the state of mortality. Now 
the first Christians many of them were Pla- 
tonic philosophers, and, no question, spake 
such language as was then understood among 
them. To understand by hell the grave is no 
tautology; because the Creed first tells what 
Christ suffered: He zms crueified, dead, and 
hnried; then it tells us what he did: He de- 
scended into hell, the third day he rose again, he 
ascended, etc. 

* In Edward the Sixth's Articles it was "went down to hell 
to preach to the spirits there."— -Fuller. 
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Discourses, or 

[Tt is worthy of note that in the Revised 
Version of the Scriptures the word here re- 
ferred to in Acts ii and in Psalm xvi is, in 
both instances, rendered by Hades, which 
really means the place or condition of the 
dead. •" The belief that Christ descended into 
hell to deliver souls from thence is founded 
chiefly on the passage in i Peter iii, 19, 20: 
"In which also he went and preached unto the 
spirits in prison, which aforetime were dis- 
obedient, when the long-sufifering of God 
waited in the days of Noah." Certainly this 
would seem to imply that all men will eventu- 
ally be saved. It is also curious to observe 
that the word Sheol, the hollow, or hell, which 
the Revised Version renders invariably by 
Hades, is translated in the Authorized Version 
thirty-one times by ''the grave," and thirty- 
one times by "hell." I suppose the translators 
tried to make the word suit the context, or 
what they thought it really meant. One 
thing is certain, which is, that even the sacred 
writers themselves were very uncertain, and 
often differing in view, regarding the nature 
and locality of hell or Hades, and although the 
fate of the lost has created what Sir J. Stephen 
calls "a whirlpool of interminable controversy, 
roaring in endless circles over a dark and un- 
fathomable abyss," the ablest of our modern 
scholars and divines look upon the biblical ex- 
pressions regarding this place as partaking 
largely of the nature of Oriental imagery, or 



Table-Talk 

figurative language, and not to be regarded in 
any sense as literal. See Canon Farrar's ad- 
mirable discourse, Eternal Hope.] 

Humility. 

Humility is a virtue all preach, none prac- 
tice, and yet everybody is content to hear. 
The master thinks it good doctrine for his 
servant, the laity for the clergy, and the clergy 
for the laity. There is huiniUtas quaedam in 
vitio [humility that becomes a vice.] H a 
man does not take notice of that excellency 
and perfection that is in himself, how can he 
be thankful to God, who is the Author of all 
excellency and perfection? Nay, if a man 
hath too mean an opinion of himself, 'twill 
render him unserviceable both to God and 
man. [Keep that in mind, young Mr. Over- 
modesty.] 

Pride may be allowed to this or that degree, 
else a man cannot keep up his dignity. In 
gluttony there must be eating, in drunken- 
ness there must be drinking: 'tis not the eat- 
ing nor the drinking that is to be blamed, but 
the excess. So in pride. 

Idolatry. 

Idolatry is in a man's own thought, not in 
the opinion of another. Put the case, I bow 
to the altar; why am I guilty of idolatry? be- 
cause a stander-by thinks so ? I am sure I do 

not believe the altar to be God; and the God 
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Discourses^ or 

I worship may be bowed to in all places and 

at all times. 

Jews. 

God at the first gave laws to all mankind, 
but afterward he gave peculiar laws to the 
Jews, which they only were to observe. Just 
as we have the common law for all England, 
and yet you have some corporations that, be- 
sides that, have peculiar laws and privileges 
to themselves. 

Talk what you will of the Jews, that they 
are cursed, they thrive where'er they come ; 
they are able to oblige the prince of their 
country by lending him money ; none of them 
beg; they keep together; and for their being 
hated, my life for yours Christians hate one 
another as much. 

[Is not this good? Is it not true? What 
would Selden have said if he were told that in 
two centuries this "peculiar people" would 
have acquired half the wealth of the world, 
and become the arbiters of the fate of tens of 
millions of Christians? The ''whirligig of 
Time" has brought in his revenges. The 
Jews are now at the bottom of so many great 
enterprises — wars, trusts, syndicates, loans, 
contracts, exchanges, railways, all-embracing 
department stores, and, above all, the great 
dailies of the public press — that, after a cen- 
tury or more of comparative freedom from 
persecution, there is now, even among civi- 
lized nations, another current turning against 

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Table-Talk 

tliem — not one against their faith; nobody 
now cares about that ; but a current of hatred 
and persecution on account of their enormous 
wealth, and the consequent power and influ- 
ence this gives them. And the worst of it is, 
this persecution does not affect so much the 
wealthy as the poor and unprotected Jews, 
who are hated solely because they belong to 
the wealth-acquiring race. What a commen- 
tary on Christian charity and justice all this 
presents! Is it not a dreadful thing for the 
whole French nation to hound one unfortunate 
Jew to death? Is not this hatred and intoler- 
ance of the Jew the very same spirit which the 
Jews themselves showed toward Jesus whom 
they crucified ? O poor sons of Jacob ! driven 
and scattered over the face of the earth, and 
doomed by sheer necessity (their early and 
long exclusion from other pursuits) to become 
traders and money-makers, when will you 
occupy an honorable and noble position in 
the eyes of the nations? And when will 
Christians learn that all persecution, from 
whatever motive, finally turns on the persecu- 
tors, or on their descendants? ''The villainy 
you teach me," says Shylock, 'T will execute ; 
and it will go hard but I will better the in- 
struction." And he has done so. Neverthe- 
less, this fearful, everlasting pursuit of wealth, 
on the part of the Jew, has had an evil influ- 
ence on the character of his race. If I were a 
Jew, I think I would become a Christian sim- 
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Discourses, or 

ply from the circumstance that the noblest, 
gentlest, grandest, most godlike Man that ever 
lived had come of my race. Money-making — 
did he ever think of such a thing? The Jew 
would say, ''No, but the Christians do." True ; 
but they do not make it such an all-engrossing 
object as the Jews.] 

Invincible Ignorance. 

'Tis all one to me, if I am told of Christ, or 
some mystery of Christianity, if I am not ca- 
pable of understanding it, as if I am not told at 
all ; my ignorance is as invincible ; and there- 
fore 'tis vain to call their ignorance only in- 
vincible who never were told of Christ. The 
trick of it is to advance the priest while the 
Church of Rome says a man must be told of 
Christ by one thus and thus ordained. [Lib- 
eral old fellow ! And a good Christian too !] 

Images. 

The Papists' taking away the Second Com- 
mandment is not haply so horrid a thing, nor 
so unreasonable among Christians, as we 
make it ; for the Jews could make no figure of 
God but they must commit idolatry, because 
He had taken no shape ; but since the assump- 
tion of our flesh we know what shape to 
picture God in. Nor do I know why we may 
not make his image provided we be sure what 
it is: as we say St. Luke took the picture of 
the Virgin Mary, and St. Veronica of our 
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Saviour. Otherwise it would be no honor 
to the king to make a picture and call it the 
king's picture when 'tis nothing like him. 

Though the learned Papists pray not to 
images, yet 'tis to be feared the ignorant do; 
as appears by that story of St. Nicholas in 
Spain. A countryman used to offer daily to St. 
Nicholas's image ; at length by mischance the 
image was broken and a new one made of his 
own plum tree; after that the man forbore: 
being complained of to his ordinary, he an- 
swered, 'tis true, he used to oft'er to the old 
image, but to the new he could not find in his 
heart, because he knew 'twas a piece of his 
own plum tree. You see what opinion this 
man had of the image ; and to this tended the 
bowing of their images, the twinkling of their 
eyes, the Virgin's milk, etc. Had they only 
meant representations, a picture would have 
done as well as these tricks. It may be with 
ris in England they do not worship images 
because, living among Protestants, they are 
either laughed out of it or beaten out of it by 
shock of argument. 

'Tis a discreet way, concerning pictures in 
churches, to set up no new nor to pull down 
no old. 

[Time and association may make anything 
sacred. Hence the very stones on which our 
Saviour walked are sacred, and worthy of 
reverence. But no sensible man would think 
of worshiping these things.] 
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Discourses, or 

Imprisonment. 

Sir Kenelm Digby was several times 
taken and let go again, at last imprisoned in 
Winchester House. I can compare him to 
nothing but a great fish that we catch and let 
go again, but still he will come to the bait ; at 
last therefore we put him into some great 
pond for store.* 

Incendiaries. 

Fancy to yourself a man sets the city on 
fire at Cripplegate, and that fire continues, by 

* See paragraphs on "Preferment," page 177. This Sir 
Kenelm Digby (1603-1665) was a very extraordinary man. 
Though his father had lost his life and estates through his 
connection with the Gunpowder Plot, the son came in for an 
estate preserved for him through the care of his mother. After 
a careful university training he spent his early manhood abroad, 
especially in France. Returning to England in 1624 he married 
Venetia Stanley, a lady of rank, beauty, and talent ; and in 
1627 he started, under royal license, a privateering expedition, 
in which he defeated a Venetian and French fleet. After the 
outbreak of the Rebellion he fell under the suspicion of the 
Parliamentary party, and was banished. Catholic or Protes- 
tant by turns, he maintained friendly relations with Cromwell, 
though he never broke off his connection with the Royalist 
party, and after the Restoration was well received by Charles II. 
He had something of the character of Lord Bolingbroke ; was 
courtier, soldier, politician, author, philosopher ; and though 
of doubtful political principles, charmed everybody by his " won- 
derful graceful behavior, his flowing courtesy and civility, and 
such a volubility of language as surprised and delighted every- 
body" with whom he came in contact. So says Clarendon. 
Anthony Wood says of him : " Had he been dropt out of the 
clouds in any part of the world, he would have made himself 
respected ; but the Jesuits, who cared not for him, spoke spite- 
fully, and said ' 'twas true, but he must not have stayed above 
six weeks.' " — W. 

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Table-Talk 

means of others, till it come to Whitefriars, 
and then he that began it would fain quench 
it: does he not deserve to be punished most 
that first set the city on fire ? So 'tis with the 
incendiaries of the state. They that first set 
it on fire, by monopolizing forest business,* 
imprisoning Parliament men tertio Carol i, 
etc., are now become regenerate, and would 
fain quench the fire. Certainly they deserve 
most to be punished, for being the first cause 
of our distractions. [How about our million- 
aires and trust companies? Are they not 
making a fire which they will fain by and by 
wish to quench?] 

Independency. 

Independency is in use at Amsterdam, 
where forty churches or congregations have 
nothing to do one with another. And 'tis, with- 
out question, agreeable to the primitive times, 
before the emperor became Christian. For 
either we must say every Church governed 
itself, or else we must fall upon that old fool- 
ish rock, that St. Peter and his successors 
governed all. But when the civil state became 
Christian they appointed who should govern 
them ; before, they governed by agreement 
and consent : if you will not do this, you shall 
come no more among us. But both the Inde- 

^ Forest business. Encroachments of the king's lands on 
the subject's. Decided by jury under direction of corrupt 
judges. — S. 

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pendent man and the Presbyterian man do 
equally exclude the civil power, though after 
a different manner. 

The Independents may as well plead they 
should not be subject to temporal things, not 
come before a constable or a justice of peace, 
as plead they should not be subject in spiritual 
things because St. Paul says, 'Ts it so, that 
there is not a wise man among you ?" 

The Pope challenges all churches to be un- 
der him, the king with the two archbishops 
challenge all the Church of England to be un- 
der him. The Presbyterian man divides the 
kingdom into as many churches as there be 
presbyteries ; and your Independent would 
have every congregation a Church by itself. 

Public Interest. 

All might go well in the commonwealth if 
everyone in the Parliament would lay down 
his own interest, and aim at the general good. 
If a man were sick and the whole college of 
physicians should come to him, and adminis- 
ter severally, haply so long as they observed 
the rules of art he might recover; but if one 
of them had a great deal of scamony by him 
he must put off that, therefore he prescribes 
scamony; another had a great deal of rhu- 
barb, and he must put off that, and therefore 
he prescribes rhubarb, etc. ; thus they would 
certainly kill the man. We destroy the com- 
monwealth while we preserve our own private 
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Table-Talk 

interests and neglect the public. [Nothing 
applies more forcibly to those American citi- 
zens of to-day who have no time to vote or to 
think of the public welfare.] 

Human Invention. 

You say there must be no human invention 
in the Church; nothing but the pure word. 
Ansiver. If I give any exposition but what is 
expressed in the text, that is my invention ; if 
you give another exposition, that is your in- 
vention; and both are human. For example, 
suppose the word tgg were in the text. I say, 
'tis meant a hen tgg, you say a goose ^gg; 
neither of these is expressed, therefore they 
are human inventions ; and I am sure the 
newer the invention the worse ; old inventions 
are best. 

If we must admit nothing but what we read 
in the Bible what will become of the Parlia- 
ment? for we do not read of that there. 

Judgments. 

We cannot tell what is a judgment of God; 
'tis presumption to take upon us to know. In 
time of plague we know we want health, and 
therefore we pray to God to give us health ; in 
time of war we know we want peace, and there- 
fore pray to God to give us peace. Commonly 
we say a judgment falls upon a man for some- 
thing in him we cannot abide. An example 
we have in King James, concerning the death 
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of Henry the Fourth of France. One said he 
was killed for his wenching, another said he 
was killed for turning his religion. "No," 
says King James (who could not abide fight- 
ing), "he was killed for permitting duels in 
his kingdom." [Henry the Fourth of France 
was stabbed in his carriage, in 1598, by a 
priest named Ravaillac] 

Judge. 

We see the pageants in Cheapside, the lions 
and the elephants, but we do not see the men 
that carry them: we see the judges look big, 
look like lions, but we do not see who moves 
them.''' 

Little things do great works when the great 
things will not. If I would take a pin from 
the ground, a little pair of tongs will do it, 
when a great pair will not. By no means go 
to a judge to do a business for you ; he will 
not hear of it; but go to some small servant 
about him, and he will dispatch it according to 
your heart's desire. [The reader may remem- 
ber this by associating it with the wise old 
English proverb: "As the man is friended so 
is the law ended."] 

* The judges almost unanimously sanctioned Charles's right 
to ship money and other extortions. When Selden and others 
sued to be admitted to be bailed out of the Tower, in 1629, Sir 
Robert Heath, Attorney-general, said to the judges, " I am 
confident that you will not bail them if any danger may ensue ; 
but first you are to consult with the king ; and he will show 
you where the danger lies." — S. 
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Table-Talk 

Juggling. 

'Tis not juggling that is to be blamed, but 
much juggling; for the zvorld cannot be gov- 
ern ed zvithout it. All your rhetoric and all 
your elenchs [sophisms] in logic come within 
the compass of juggling. 

[This reminds one of Oxenstiern's famous 
saying: "Look about you, my son, and see 
how little wisdom it takes to govern the 
world !" All politicians are more or less jug- 
glers. Sir Henry Wotton's definition of an 
embassador as ''an honest man sent abroad to 
lie for his country's good" is also in point. 
Butler, who knew Selden, may have had Sel- 
den's words in mind when he wrote: 

" For all a rhetorician's rules 

Teach nothing but to name his tools."] 

Jurisdiction. 

There's no such thing as spiritual jurisdic- 
tion ; all is civil ; the Church's is the same with 
the lord mayor's. Suppose a Christian came 
into a pagan country, how can you fancy he 
shall have any power there? He finds fault 
with the gods of the country; well, they will 
put him to death for it: when he is a martyr, 
what follows? Does that argue he has any 
spiritual jurisdiction? If the clergy say the 
Church ought to be governed thus and thus, 
by the word of God, that is doctrinal, that is 
not discipline. 

The Pope, he challenges jurisdiction over 

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Discourses, or 

all ; the bishops, they pretend to it as well as 
he; the Presbyterians, they would have it to 
themselves ; but over whom is all this jurisdic- 
tion ? Over the poor laymen. 

[This last paragraph recalls a striking pic- 
ture which may be seen in some of the inns of 
Germany, or might have been seen before the 
present emperor came to the throne. It repre- 
sents a sort of pyramid, with broad ascending 
steps, on the top of which, or on the highest 
step, stands the emperor, exclaiming, *T live 
on the taxes !" On the next lower step stands 
the soldier, who cries, "I pay for nothing!" 
On the step below him is the pastor, who says, 
"I live on the tithes!" Then conies the noble- 
man on the next step, who airily cries, 'T pay 
no taxes !" Then the beggar, whining, 'T live 
on what is given me !" And then the Jew, who 
mutters, 'T bleed them all !" Finally, on the 
lowest step of all, beneath the whole crew, 
stands the poor peasant with bent back, who 
cries out, with beseeching eye, "Dear Lord ! 
have pity on me ! for I have to support all these 
fellows !"] 

Jus DiVINUM. 

All things are held by jus divinum [divine 
right] , either immediately or mediately. 

Nothing has lost the Pope so much in 
his supremacy as not acknowledging what 
princes gave him. Tis a scorn upon the civil 
power and an unthankfulness in the priest. 

J 22 



Table- Talk 

But the Church runs to jus divinum, lest, if 
they should acknowledge that what they have 
they have by positive law, it might be as well 
taken from them as given to them. [Con- 
sider this carefully. No Church in the United 
States receives anything from the state except 
freedom from taxation. And no Church here 
claims anything by divine right.] 

King. 

A KING is a thing men have made for their 
own sakes, for quietness' sake. Just as in a 
family one man is appointed to buy the meat: 
if every man should buy, or if there were 
many buyers, they would never agree; one 
would buy what the other liked not or what 
the other had bought before, so there would 
be a confusion. But, that charge being com- 
mitted to one, he according to his discretion 
pleases all; if they have not what they would 
have one day they shall have it the next, or 
something as good. 

The word king directs our eyes. Suppose it 
had been consul, or dictator. To think all 
kings alike is the same folly as if a consul of 
Aleppo or Smyrna should claim to himself 
the same power that a consul at Rome had: 
What ! am not I a consul ? Or a duke of Eng- 
land should think himself like the duke of 
Florence. Besides, let the divines in their 
pulpits say what they will, they in their prac- 
tice deny that all is the king's: they sue him, 
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Discourses^ or 

and so does all the nation, whereof they are a 
part. What matter is it, then, what they 
preach or teach in the schools? 

Kings are all individuals, this or that king; 
there is no species of kings. 

A king that claims privileges in his own 
country, because they have them in another, 
is just as a cook that claims fees in one lord's 
house because they are allowed in another. 
If the master of the house will yield them, well 
and good. [So you see it is folly for the king 
of England to claim anything because the 
king of France has it. It is only from the 
people, his true mastens, he can get anything 
rightly. .1 once heard of some Parliamentmen 
or Congressmen who, in a crowd, cried, "Make 
way ; we are ,the representatives of the peo- 
ple !" Whereupon the people cried, "You 
make way ! we are the people themselves !"] 

The text, "Render unto Csesar the things 
that are Caesar's," makes as much against 
kings as for them; for it says plainly that 
some things are not Caesar's. But divines 
make choice of it, first in flattery, and then be- 
cause of the other part adjoined to it, "Render 
unto God the things that are God's," where 
they bring in the Church. 

A king outed of his country, that takes as 

much upon him as he did at home in his own 

court, is as if a man were on high, and I, being 

upon the ground, were used to lift up my voice 

to him that he might hear me, at length should 
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Table-Talk 

come down, and then expects I should speak 
as loud to him as I did before. 

King of England. 

The king can do no wrong; that is, no 
process can be granted against him. What 
must be done then ? Petition him, and the king 
writes upon the petition soit droit fait, and 
sends it to the chancery, and then the business 
is heard. His confessor \y\\\ not tell him he 
can do no wrong. 

There's a great deal of difference between 
head of the Church, and supreme governor, as 
our canons call the king. Conceive it thus: 
there is in the kingdom of England a college 
of physicians; the king is supreme governor 
of that; but not head of them, nor president 
of the college, nor the best physician. 

After the dissolution of abbeys, they did not 
much advance the king's supremacy, for they 
only cared to exclude the Pope: hence have 
we had several translations of the Bible put 
upon us. But now we must look to it, other- 
wise the king may put upon us what religion 
he pleases. 

The King. 

'Tis hard to make an accommodation be- 
tween the king and the Parliament. If you 
and I fell out about money, you said I owed 
you twenty pounds; I said I owed you but 
ten pounds ; it may be a third party allowing 
me twenty marks might make us friends. But 

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Discourses, or 

if I said I owed you twenty pounds of silver, 
and you said I owed you twenty pounds of 
diamonds, which is a sum innumerable, 'tis 
impossible we should ever agree. This is the 
case. [That was the sum and substance of 
Senator Sumner's argument in the Alabama 
claims dispute with England. The war was 
prolonged so many years at a million dollars 
a day — hence so many million dollars' dam- 
ages. Yet, thank God, the two nations agreed 
on a compromise.] 

The king is equally abused now as before: 
then they flattered him and made him do ill 
things, now they would force him against his 
conscience. If a physician should tell me 
everything I had a mind to was good for me, 
though in truth 'twas poison, he abused me; 
and he abuses me as much that would force 
me to take something whether I will or no. 

The king, so long as he is our king, may do 
with his officers what he pleases; as the 
master of the house may turn away all his 
servants and take whom he pleases. 

The king's oath is not security enough for 
our property, for he swears to govern accord- 
ing to law; now the judges they interpret the 
law, and what judges can be made to do we 
know. [And this we know, too, in the United 
States. Vide Income Tax decision.] 

The king and the Parliament, now falling 
out, are just as when there is foul play offered 
among gamesters: one snatches the other's 
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Table-Talk 

stake; they seize what they can of one an- 
other's. 'Tis not to be asked whether it 
belongs to the king to do this or that : before, 
when there was fair play, it did. But now 
they will do what is most convenient for their 
own safety. If two fall to scuffling, one tears 
the other's band, the other tears his; when 
they were friends they were quiet, and did no 
such thing ; they let one another's bands alone. 
The king calling his friends from the Par- 
liament, because he had vise of them at Ox- 
ford, is as if a man should have use of a little 
piece of wood and he runs down into the 
cellar, and takes the spigot [from the cask] ; 
in the meantime all the beer runs about the 
house. When his friends are absent the king 
is lost. 

Language. 

Latimer is the corruption of Latiner; It 
signifies he that interprets Latin; and though 
he interpreted French, Spanish, or Italian, he 
was called the king's Latimer, that is, the 
king's interpreter. 

If you look upon the language spoken in the 
Saxon time, and the language spoken now, 
you will find the difference to be, just as if a 
man had a cloak that he wore plain in Queen 
Elizabeth's day ; and since, here he has put in a 
piece of red, and there a piece of blue, and here 
a piece of green, and there a piece of orange- 
tawny. We borrow words from the French, 

Italian, Latin, as every pedantic man pleases. 
9 127 



Discourses, or 

We have more words than notions; half a 
dozen words for the same thing. Sometimes 
we put a new signification to an old word, as 
when we call a piece a gun. The word gun 
was in use in England for an engine to cast a 
thing from a man long before there was any 
gunpowder found out. [Some one has sar- 
castically said that originally all languages 
were put in a pot and boiled, and the one that 
boiled over was English ! That is, perhaps, 
how it comes to have the pith and force of all 
other languages combined. Macaulay de- 
scribes the English Constitution as a great 
piece of patched cloth, whose patches were put 
in at various times, but which suits the wearer 
better than the newest garment that can be 
made. Is not the English language something 
similar ?] 

Words must be fitted to a man's mouth. 
'Twas well said by the fellow that was to make 
a speech for my lord mayor, he desired to 
take measure of his lordship's mouth ! 

Law. 

A MAN may plead not guilty, and yet tell no 
lie ; for by the law no man is bound to accuse 
himself ; so that when I say, "Not guilty," the 
meaning is as if I should say, by way of para- 
phrase, *T am not so guilty as to tell you; if 
you will bring me to a trial, and have me pun- 
ished for this you lay to my charge, prove it 

against me." [So the Irishman who, on being 
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Table-Talk 

asked if he were guilty, exclaimed, "How do 
I know until I hear the evidence?" was not 
such a fool after all — or rather, not such an 
ignoramus as he seemed. He may, of course, 
have uttered this as a witticism ; but that is 
doubtful.] 

Ignorance of the law excuses no man. Not 
that all men know the law, but because 
'tis an excuse every man will plead, and no 
man can tell how to confute him. [Let 
the young reader reflect on this for a mo- 
ment. I used to think it hard to punish a 
man for doing what he did not know to be 
wrong. But how are we to know, for sure, 
that such a man (the lawbreaker) did not 
kiiGzv he was doing wrong? You see, this 
would be an excuse which every accused per- 
son might plead, "and no man can tell how to 
confute him." Only before the court of the 
Omniscient can such a plea avail. Hence the 
necessity of teaching common law in the pub- 
lie schools.] 

The king of Spain was outlawed in West- 
minster Hall, I being of counsel against him. 
A merchant had recovered costs against him 
in a suit, which, because he could not get, we 
advised to have him outlawed for not appear- 
ing, and so he was. As soon as Gondomar 
heard that, he presently sent the money, by rea- 
son, if his master had been outlawed, he could 
not have the benefit of the law, which would 

have been very prejudicial, there being then 
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Discourses, or 

many suits depending betwixt the king of 
Spain and our English merchants.* 

Every law is a contract between the king 
and the people, and therefore to be kept. A 
hundred men may owe me a hundred pounds, 
just as well as one man ; and shall they not pay 
me because they are stronger than I? Objec- 
tion. O, but they all lose if they keep that 
law. Anszver. Let them look to the making 
of their bargain. If I sell my lands, and when 
I have done, one comes and tells me I have 
nothing else to keep me, I and my wife and 
children must starve if I part with my land, 
must I therefore not let them have my land 
that have bought it and paid for it ? 

Law of Nature. 

I CANNOT fancy to myself what the Law of 
Nature means, except it be the Law of God.f 
How should I know I ought not to steal, I 
ought not to commit adultery, unless some- 
body had told me so? Surely 'tis because I have 
been told so. 'Tis not because I think I ought 
not to do them, nor because you think I ought 
not ; if so, our minds might change. Whence 

* Sir John Leach, when Vice Chancellor in 1819, stated the 
law of the land to be that foreign monarchs or governments 
have no peculiar privilege in the courts of law, where they are 
only considered in the light of private individuals, and can sue 
and be sued as such. — S. 

t The reader need scarcely be reminded that Selden has 
written a learned treatise — De Jure Naturali et Ge7itiumyjuxta 
Disciplinam Ebrceorum. — S. 



Table-Talk 

then comes the restraint? From a higher 
Power; nothing else can bind. I cannot bind 
myself, for I may untie myself again; nor an 
equal cannot bind me, for we may untie one 
another: it must be a superior Power, even 
God Almighty. If two of us make a bargain, 
why should either of us stand to it? What 
need you care what you say, or what need I 
care what I say? Certainly because there is 
something about me that tells me Fides est 
sei'vanda; and if we after alter our minds, and 
make a new bargain, there's Fides servanda 
there too. 

Learning. 

No man is the wiser for his learning : it may 
administer matter to work in, or objects to 
work upon ; but wit and wisdom are born with 
a man. 

[This assertion is, to say the least, ques- 
tionable. Talents, genius, intellect come by 
nature ; these may be said to be "born with a 
man;" but wisdom comes by study, observa- 
tion, and experience. Of course no man can 
be wise without common sense, which may be 
said to be *'born with a man." But there are 
men with common sense who are not wise, and 
there are men with genius and uncommon 
talents who are not wise. For wisdom is a 
different thing, and by no means comes by na- 
ture alone. Experience, suffering, study make 
men wise. A man is born with capacity, 
but never with wisdom. He may, by his capac- 
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Discourses, or 

ity, become a wise man ; but he may not. How 
often, on looking back, we exclaim, ''What a 
fool I was at that time ! How stupidly I 
acted on such and such an occasion!" which 
proves that a man grozvs zvise by experience. 
Besides, study, thought, and learning form a 
part of this experience. Let any man of ma- 
ture years think of what he was and of what 
he is, and he will, I think, be convinced that 
wisdom is acquired and not "born with a 
man." And it is the same with nations as 
with individuals. Have not France and Eng- 
land grown wise by their experience of the 
Bourbons, the Napoleons, and the Stuarts? 
Have not the Americans learned something of 
their own power as well as that of Spain by 
the late war?] 

Most men's learning is nothing but history 
duly taken up. If I quote Thomas Aquinas 
for some tenet, and believe it because the 
schoolmen say so, that is but history. Few 
men make themselves masters of the things 
they write or speak of. 

The Jesuits and the lawyers of France and 
the Low Countries have engrossed all learn- 
ing. The rest of the world make nothing but 
homilies. 

'Tis observable that in Athens, where the 
arts flourished, they were governed by a de- 
mocracy: learning made the people think 
themselves as wise as anybody, and they would 
govern as well as others ; and they spake as it 
132 



Table-Talk 

were by way of contempt, that in the East 
and in the North they had kings ; and why ? 
Because the most part of them followed their 
business ; and if some one man had made him- 
self wiser than the rest he governed them, and 
they willingly submitted themselves to him. 
Aristotle makes the observation. And as in 
Athens the philosophers made the people 
knowing, and therefore they thought them- 
selves wise enough to govern, so does preach- 
ing with us, and that makes us affect a de- 
mocracy : for upon these two grounds we all 
would be governors, either because we think 
ourselves as wise as the best or because we 
think ourselves the elect, and have the Spirit, 
and the rest a company of reprobates that be- 
long to the devil. 

Lecturers. 

Lecturers do in a parish church what the 
friars did heretofore: get away not only the 
affections but the bounty that should be be- 
stowed upon the minister. 

Lecturers get a great deal of money because 
they preach the people tame, as a man watches 
a hawk ;* and then they do what they list with 
them. 

The lectures in Blackfriars, performed by 

* Hawks were tamed by watching. Shakespeare has several 
allusions to it. Desdemona, in assuring Cassio how she will 
urge his suit to Othello, says : 

"I'll watch him tame, and talk him out of patience."— S, 
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Discourses, or 

officers of the army, tradesmen, and ministers, 
is as if a great lord should make a feast, and 
he would have his cook dress one dish, and his 
coachman another, his porter a third, etc. 

Libels. 

Though some make slight of libels [lam- 
poons] , yet you may see by them how the wind 
sits : as, take a straw and throw it up into the 
air, you shall see by that which way the wind 
is, which you shall not do by casting up a 
stone. Solid things do not show the complex- 
ion of the times so well as ballads and libels. 

Liturgy. 

There is no Church without a liturgy, nor 
indeed can there be conveniently, as there is 
no school without a grammar. One scholar 
may be taught otherwise upon the stock of his 
acumen, but not a whole school. One or two 
that are piously disposed may serve them- 
selves their own way, but hardly a whole 
nation. 

To know what was generally believed in all 
ages, the way is to consult the liturgies, not any 
private man's writing. As, if you would know 
how the Church of England serves God, go to 
the Common-prayer book, consult not this nor 
that man. Besides, liturgies never compli- 
ment, nor use high expressions. The Fathers 
ofttimes speak oratoriously. 
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Table-Talk 

New Parliament Lords. 

Great lords, by reason of their flatterers, 
are the first that know their own virtues and 
the last that know their own vices. Some of 
them are ashamed upward, because their an- 
cestors were too great. Others are ashamed 
downward, because they were too little. 

The making of new lords lessens all the rest. 
'Tis in the business of lords as 'twas with 
St. Nicholas's image : the countryman, you 
know, could not find in his heart to adore the 
new image, made of his own plum tree, 
though he had formerly worshiped the old one. 
The lords that are ancient we honor because 
we know not whence they come ; but the new 
ones we slight, because we know their begin- 
ning. 

For the Irish lords to take upon them [the 
same rank] here in England, is as if the cook 
in the fair should come to my Lady Kent's 
kitchen, and take upon him to roast the meat 
there because he is a cook in another place. 

[The hit at the new lords would suit the 
most radical modern reformer. Capital now 
makes lords, like everything else : witness 
Lord Bass, the brewer of Bass's ale. The 
younger Pitt wanted to make a lord of every 
man with an income of £t 0,000 a year.] 

Marriage. 
Of all actions of a man's life, his marriage 
does least concern other people, yet of all ac- 
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Discourses, or 

tions of our life 'tis most meddled with by 
other people. 

Marriage is nothing but a civil contract. 
'Tis true, 'tis an ordinance of God : so is every 
other contract; God commands me to keep it 
when I have made it. 

Marriage is a desperate thing. The frogs 
in y^sop were extreme wise ; they had a great 
mind to some water, but they would not leap 
into the well, because they could not get out 
again. [He himself never married — he would 
not be tied up !] 

We single out particulars, and apply God's 
providence to them. Thus when two are mar- 
ried, and have undone one another, they cry 
it was God's providence we should come to- 
gether, when God's providence does equally 
concur to everything [that happens]. 

Measure of Things. 

We measure from ourselves ; and as things 
are for our use and purpose so we approve 
them. Bring a pear to the table that is rot- 
ten ; we cry it down, 'tis naught ; but bring a 
medlar that is rotten, and 'tis a fine thing ; and 
yet I'll warrant you the pear thinks as well of 
itself as the medlar does. 

We measure the excellency of other men by 
some excellency we conceive to be in our- 
selves. Nash, a poet, poor enough (as poets 
use to be), seeing an alderman, with his gold 

chain, upon his great horse, by way of scorn 
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Table-Talk 

said to one of his companions, ''Do you see 
yon fellow, how goodly, how big he looks? 
Why, that fellow cannot make a blank verse !" 
Nay, we measure the goodness of God from 
ourselves; we measure his goodness, his jus- 
tice, his wisdom, by something we call just, 
good, or wise in ourselves ; and in so doing we 
judge proportionably to the country fellow in 
the play, who said, if he were a king he would 
live like a lord and have peas and bacon every 
day, and a whip that cried. Slash ! 

Difference of Men. 

The difference of men is very great; you 
would scarce think them to be of the same 
species; and yet it consists more in the affec- 
tion than in the intellect. For as in the 
strength of body two men shall be of an equal 
strength, yet one shall appear stronger than 
the other because he exercises, and puts out 
his strength, the other will not stir nor strain 
himself: so 'tis in the strength of the brain; 
the one endeavors, and strains, and labors, and 
studies, the other sits still, and is idle, and 
takes no pains, and therefore he appears so 
much the inferior. [This is the great, unan- 
swerable argument against communism.] 

Minister Divine. 
The imposition of hands upon the minister, 
when all is done, will be nothing but a desig- 
nation of a person to this or that office or em- 
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Discourses, or 

ployment in the Church. 'Tis a ridiculous 
phrase, that of the canonists, con f err e or dines. 
'Tis cooptare aliquem in ordineni; to make a 
man one of us ; one of our number, one of our 
order. So Cicero would understand what I 
said, it being a phrase borrowed from the 
Latins, and to be understood proportionably to 
what was among them. 

Those words you now use in making a min- 
ister, ''Receive the Holy Ghost," were used by 
the Jews in the making of a lawyer ; from 
thence we have them. So this is a villainous 
key to something, as if you would have some 
other kind of prefecture than a mayoralty, and 
yet keep the same ceremony that was used in 
making the mayor. 

A priest has no such thing as an indelible 
character : what difference do you find betwixt 
him and another man after ordination? Only 
he is made a priest, as I said, by designation; 
as a lawyer is called to the bar, then made a 
sergeant. All men that would get power over 
others make themselves as unlike others as 
they can ; upon the same ground the priests 
made themselves unlike the laity. [Excellent ! 
O rare old expositor.] 

A minister, when he is made, is materia 
prima, apt for any form the state will put upon 
him, but of himself he can do nothing. Like 
a doctor of law in the university, he hath a 
great deal of law in him but cannot use it till 
he be made somebody's chancellor; or like a 
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Table-Talk 

physician ; before he be received into a house 
he can give nobody physic; indeed after the 
master of the house hath given him charge of 
his servants, then he may. Or Hke a suffra- 
gan, that could do nothing but give orders, 
and yet he was a bishop. 

A minister should preach according to the 
articles of religion established in the Church 
where he is. To be a civil lawyer let a man 
read Justinian, and the body of the law, to con- 
firm his brain to that way ; but when he comes 
to practice he must make use of it so far as it 
concerns the law received in his own country. 
To be a physician let a man read Galen and 
Hippocrates ; but when he practices he must 
apply his medicines according to the temper 
of those men's bodies with whom he lives, and 
have respect to the heat and cold of climes ; 
otherwise that which in Pergamus, where 
Galen lived, was physic, in our cold climate 
may be poison. So, to be a divine let him read 
the whole body of divinity, the Fathers and the 
schoolmen, but when he comes to practice he 
must use it and apply it according to those 
grounds and articles of religion that are es- 
tablished in the Church, and this with sense. 

Go and teach all nations. This was said to 
all Christians that then were, before the dis- 
tinction of clergy and laity; there have been 
since men designed to preach only by the State, 
as some men are designed to study the law, 
others to study physic. When the Lord's Sup- 
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Discourses^ or 

per was instituted there were none present but 
the disciples; shall none, then, but ministers 
receive ? 

There is all the reason you should believe 
your minister, unless you have studied divinity 
as well as he, or more than he. 

'Tis a foolish thing to say ministers must not 
meddle with secular matters because his own 
profession will take up the whole man. May 
he not eat, or drink, or walk, or learn to sing? 
The meaning of that is, he must seriously at- 
tend his calling. 

Ministers with the Papists, that is their 
priests, have much respect ; with the Puritans 
they have much, and that upon the same 
ground: they pretend both of them to come 
immediately from Christ ; but with the Protes- 
tants they have very little ; the reason whereof 
is, in the beginning of the Reformation they 
were glad to get such [persons] to take livings 
as they could procure by any invitations, things 
of pitiful condition. The nobility and gentry 
would not suffer their sons or kindred to med- 
dle with the Church ; and therefore at this day, 
when they see a parson, they think him to be 
such a thing still, and there they will keep him, 
and use him accordingly ; if he be a gentleman, 
he is singled out, and is used the more respect- 
fully. 

['Tis pretty much for the same reason 
that schoolmasters have to this day little or no 
respect in England; for originally schoolmasters 
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Table- Talk 

were very poor creatures (''things of pitiful 
condition"), luifit for any employment requir- 
ing skill or training. We all know how keenly 
Swift felt the humiliation of his position at 
Moor Park, when he was a sort of private 
secretary to Sir William Temple and tutor to 
his daughter, "with a salary of twenty pounds 
a year, a dinner at the upper servants' table, 
and a cassock that was only not a livery." 
Hence the impertinent but significant question 
addressed to Oliver Goldsmith by one of the 
boys at the school where the latter was usher, 
**Do yon consider yourself a gentleman ?" The 
schoolmaster is now, however, beginning to be 
regarded with a different eye ; people are com- 
ing to see that the future of the State depends 
largely upon his character and efficiency, and 
I trust the time is not far distant when he will 
be as much esteemed and as well rewarded for 
his services as any other professional man.] 

That the Protestant minister is least re- 
garded, appears by the old story of the keeper 
of the Clink.* He had priests of several sorts 
sent unto him ; as they came in, he asked them 

* T^e Clink. " Now amongst the fruitful generation of jails 
in London, there were thought never a better, some less bad 
amongst them. I take the Marshalsea to be in those times the 
best for usage of prisoners. But O ! the misery of God's poor 
saints in Newgate, under Alexander the Jailer (more cruel than 
his namesake was to St. Paul) in Lollards' Tower, the Clink, 
and Bonner's Coal House." — Fiiller. 

The Clink was an appendage to the Bishop of Winchester's 
palace in South wark. — S. 

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Discourses^ or 

who they were. Who are you ? to the first. I 
am a priest of the Church of Rome. You are 
welcome, quoth the keeper ; there are those that 
will take care of you. And who are you? A 
silenced minister. You are welcome too ; I shall 
fare the better for you. And who are you ? A 
minister of the Church of England. O, God 
help me, quoth the keeper, I shall get nothing 
by you ; I am sure you may lie, and starve, and 
rot before anybody will look after you. 

Methinks 'tis an ignorant thing for a Church- 
man to call himself the minister of Christ be- 
cause St. Paul or the apostles called themselves 
so. If one of them had a voice from heaven, 
as St. Paul had, I will grant he is a minister of 
Christ ; I will call him so too. Must they take 
upon them as the apostles did? Can they do 
as the apostles could? The apostles had a 
mark to be known by; spake tongues, cured 
diseases, trod upon serpents, etc. Can they do 
this? If a gentleman tells me he will send his 
man to me, and I did not know his man, but he 
gave me this mark to know him by : he should 
bring in his hand a rich jewel ; if a fellow came 
to m.e with a pebble-stone, had I any reason 
to believe he was the gentleman's man? 

Money. 

Money makes a man laugh. A blind fiddler 

playing to a company, and playing but scurvily, 

the company laughed at him ; his boy that led 

him, perceiving this, cried, "Father, let us be 
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Table-Talk 

gone, for they do nothing but laugh at you." 
"Hold thy peace, boy," said the fiddler; 'Ve 
shall have their money presently, and then we 
will laugh at them." 

Euclid was beaten, in Boccaline,* for teach- 
ing his scholars a mathematical figure in his 
school whereby he showed that all the lives 
both of princes and private men tended to one 
center, con gentile:jza, handsomely, to get 
money out of other men's pockets and put it 
into their own. 

The Pope used heretofore to send the princes 
of Christendom to fight against the Turk ; but 
prince and Pope finely juggled together; the 
moneys were raised, and some men went out 
to the Holy War ; but commonly after they had 
got the money the Turk was pretty quiet, and 
the prince and the Pope shared it between 
them. 

In all times the princes in England have done 
something illegal to get money, but then came a 
Parliament and all was well; the people and 
the prince kissed and were friends, and so 
things were quiet for a while. Afterward 
there was another trick found out to get money, 

* Boccaline. That is, in a story of Boccalini. He was a 
famous satirist of the sixteenth century, and in the Ragguagli 
di Parftasso feigns this story of Euclid. The common tradition 
is that Boccalini himself was killed by the very means he sup- 
posed employed against Euclid, being beaten to death by four 
men armed with bags of sand. It is more probable that rumor 
picked up his own fiction ignorantly and applied it to himself. 
—V. Biogr. Universelle. Ragguagli di Parnasso. — S. 
10 143 



Discourses, or 

and after they had got it, another ParHament 
was called to set all right, etc. ; but now they 
have outrun the constable. [How well Selden 
understood the machinations of these political 
jugglers! They seem to be no better in our 
own day. Is it true, as Selden says elsewhere, 
that ''the world cannot be governed without 
juggling?" Surely these jugglers must not, 
like the poor, be always with us. The hard- 
worked mechanic, even the laborer and the 
''peasant with bent back," are beginning to 
understand these things now, and they will, 
in time, I imagine, make themselves felt. The 
worst of it is, that when one of these now gets 
on "the top step" he is likely to be as bad as 
the rest.] 

Moral Honesty. 

They that cry down moral honesty cry down 
that which is a great part of religion : my duty 
toward God and my duty toward man. What 
care I to see a man run after a sermon if he 
cozens and cheats as soon as he comes home? 
On the other side, morality must not be with- 
out religion ; for, if so, it may change as I see 
convenience. Religion must govern it. He 
that has not religion to govern his morality is 
not a dram better than my mastiff dog : so long 
as you stroke him and please him, and do not 
pinch him, he will play with you as finely as 
may be; he is a very good moral mastiff; 
but if you hurt him he will fly in your face and 
tear out your throat. [Unfortunately, we have 
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Table-Talk 

to-day too many who have much rehgion but 
httle morahty. But, on the other hand, would 
not the moral atheists, who have no religion, 
act like the ''mastiff dog" when they are hurt?] 

Mortgage. 

In case I receive a thousand pounds, and 
mortgage as much land as is worth two thou- 
sand to you, if I do not pay the money at such 
a day I fail. Whether you may take my land 
and keep it, in point of conscience? Answer. If 
you had my lands as security only for your 
money, then you are not to keep it ; but if we 
bargained so that if I did not repay your one 
thousand pounds my land should go for it, be 
it what it will, no doubt you may with a safe 
conscience keep it; for in these things all the 
obligation is servare iidem. 

Number. 

Number in itself is nothing, has nothing to 
do with nature, but is merely of human impo- 
sition, a mere sound. So when they say the 
seventh son is fortunate it means nothing; for 
if you count from the seventh backward then 
the first is the seventh : why is not he likewise 
fortunate ? [There is the logic of a lawyer for 
you. It would be hard to deceive him with 
such superstitious nonsense. The same logic 
may, of course, be applied to the number 13, 
etc.] 

I4S 



Discourses, or 

Oaths. 

Swearing was another thing with the Jews 
than with us, because they might not pro- 
nounce the name of the Lord Jehovah. 

There is no oath scarcely but we swear to 
things we are ignorant of : for example, the 
oath of supremacy ; how many know how the 
king is king? what are his right and preroga- 
tive ? So how many know what are the privi- 
leges of the Parliament and the liberty of the 
subject when they take the protestation? But 
the meaning is, they will defend them when 
they know them. As, if I should swear I would 
take part with all that wear red ribbons in their 
hats, it may be I do not know which color is 
red ; but when I do know, and see a red ribbon 
in a man's hat, then will I take his part. 

I cannot conceive how an oath is imposed 
where there is a parity, as in the House of 
Commons ; they are all pares inter se; only one 
brings a paper and shows it the rest ; they look 
upon it, and in their own sense take it. Now 
they are but pares to me, who am one of the 
House, for I do not acknowledge myself their 
subject ; if I did, then no question I was bound 
by an oath of their imposing. 'Tis to me but 
reading a paper in my own sense. 

There is a great difference between an as- 
sertory oath and a promissory oath. An 
assertory oath is made to a man before God, 
and I must swear so as man may know what I 

mean: but a promissory oath is made to God 
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Table-Talk 

only, and I am sure he knows my meaning. So 
in the new oath it runs, 'Svhereas I bcHcve in 
my conscience," etc. "I will assist thus and 
thus :" that ivlicrcas gives me an outloose ; for 
if I do not believe so, for aught I know I swear 
not at all. 

In a promissory oath, the mind I am in is a 
good interpretation; for if there be enough 
happened to change my mind I do not know 
why I should not. If I promise to go to Oxford 
to-morrow, and mean it when I say it, and 
afterward it appears to me that 'twill be my 
undoing ; will you say I have broke my promise 
if I stay at home? Certainly I must not go. 

The Jews had this way w^ith them, concern- 
ing a promissory oath or vow ; if one of them 
had vowed a vow, which afterwards appeared 
to him to be very prejudicial by reason of 
something he either did not foresee, or did not 
think of, w^hen he made his vow ; if he made 
it known to three of his countrymen, they had 
power to absolve him, though he could not 
absolve himself; and that they picked out of 
some words in the text."^ Perjury hath only 
to do with an assertory oath ; and no man was 

* Butler, who must have known Selden, as he was some time 
in the service of Lady Kent, thus refers to this practice : 
The rabbins write, when any Jew 
^ Did make to God or man a vow, 

Which afterwards he found untoward, 
* And stubborn to be kept, or too hard ; 

Any three other Jews o' th' nation 
Might free him from his obUgation. — S. 
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Discourses, or 

punished for perjury by man's law till Queen 
Elizabeth's time ; 'twas left to God, as a sin 
against him : the reason was, because 'twas so 
hard a thing to prove a man perjured ; I might 
misunderstand him, and he swears as he 
thought. 

When men ask me whether they may take an 
oath in their own sense, 'tis to me as if they 
should ask whether they may go to such a place 
upon their own legs ; I would fain know how 
they can go otherwise. 

Now oaths are so frequent they should be 
taken like pills: swallowed whole; if you chew 
them you will find them bitter ; if you think 
what you swear, 'twill hardly go down. [Is 
not this why Englishmen hate to take the 
naturalization oath ?] 

Oracles. 

Oracles ceased presently after Christ, as 
soon as nobody believed them.* Just as we have 

* Milton, in his " Hymn on the Nativity," of course poetically 
follows the notion that the oracles ceased at the coming of 
Christ : 

The oracles are dumb, 
No voice or hideous hum 
Runs through th' arched roof in w^ords deceiving. 
Apollo from his shrine 
Can no more divine, 
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. 
And about that time their credit apparently was shaken, but 
there were other- causes, as Van Dale and Fontanelle have 
shown, which eventually silenced them at a later period. It 
takes a long time to eradicate anv superstitious belief among 
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Table-Talk 

no fortune tellers, nor wise men, when no- 
body cares for them. Some time you have a 
season for them, when people believe them, 
and neither of these, I conceive, wrought by 
the devil. 

Opinion. 

Opinion and affection extremely differ. I 
may affect a woman best, but it does not follow 
I must think her the handsomest woman in the 
world, I love apples best of any fruit, but it 
does not follow I must think apples to be the 
best fruit. Opinion is something wherein I 
go about to give reason why all the world 
should think as I think. Affection is a thing 
wherein I look after the pleasing of myself.* 

'Twas a good fancy of an old Platonic : The 
gods, which are above men, had something 
whereof man did partake, an intellect, knowl- 
edge, and the gods kept on their course quietly. 
The beasts, which are below man, had some- 
thing whereof man did partake, sense and 
growth, and the beasts lived quietly in their 
way. But man had something in him whereof 

the people ; and the learned, even within the last century, have 
shown themselves sufficiently credulous of vaticinations and 
supposed supernatural events. — S. 

* Good ! This is the true difference betwixt the beautiful and 
the agreeable, which Knight and the rest of that Ttlijdoq adeov 
have so beneficially confounded, meretricibus scilicet et Plutoni. 
O what an insight this whole article gives into a wise man's 
heart who has been compelled to act with the many, as one of 
the many ! It explains Sir Thomas More's zealous Romanism. 
— Coleridge. 

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Discourses, or 

neither gods nor beasts did partake, which 
gave him all the trouble and made all the con- 
fusion in the world : and that is opinion. 

'Tis a foolish thing for me to be brought off 
froin an opinion in a thing neither of us know, 
but are led only by some cobweb stuff; as in 
such a case as this : Utruni angeli in vie em 
colloqnantur? If I forsake my side in such a 
case I show myself wonderful light, or infi- 
nitely complying, or flattering the other party : 
but if I be in a business of nature, and hold an 
opinion one way, and some man's experience 
has found out the contrary, I may with a safe 
reputation give up my side. [Utruni angeli in 
viceni eoUoquantiirf That is. Do the angels 
engage in conversation ? These were the ques- 
tions which engaged the attention of the 
schoolmen, whose system of philosophy Lord 
Bacon destroyed. The latter showed that we 
should discuss only such things as may be 
found out, or prove useful to mankind ; while 
the schoolmen occupied' themselves with such 
questions as above, which Selden rightly calls 
''cobweb stuff." The schoolmen argued for 
mere argument's sake, to prove their dexterity 
or develop skill in reasoning. Among other 
things, they inquired. Does God know more 
things than he is aware of? and. How many 
angels can stand on the point of a needle? — 
Notice that Selden wisely says that no man 
should hold an opinion contrary to the experi- 
ence of another.] 

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Table-Talk 

'Tis a vain thing to talk of a heretic, for a 
man for his heart can think no otherwise than 
he does think.''' In the primitive times there 
were many opinions ; nothing, scarce, but some 
or other held. One of these opinions being 
embraced by some prince, and received into his 
kingdom, the rest were condemned as heresies ; 
and his religion, which was but one of the 
several opinions first, is said to be orthodox, 
and so have continued ever since the apostles. 
[How true this is ! and how much more liberal 
he was than most Churchmen of our day !] 

Parliament. 

All are involved in a Parliament. There 
was a time when all men had their voice in 
choosing knights. About Henry the Sixth's 
time they found the inconvenience ; so one Par- 
liament made a law that only he that had forty 
shillings per annum should give his voice ; they 
under should be excluded. They made the law 
who had the voice of all, as well under forty 
shillings as above ; and thus it continues at this 
day. All consent civilly in a Parliament; 
women are involved in the men, children in 

* Bishop Taylor, in his Liberty of Prophesying, Sect. 2. 
§ 8, says, '* It is inconsistent with the goodness of God to con- 
demn those who err where the error hath nothing of the will in 
it, who therefore cannot repent of their error, because they 
believe it true. . . . For all have a concomitant assent to the 
truth of what they believe ; and no man can at the same time 
believe what he does jiot believe.''^ — S. 
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Discourses, or 

those of perfect age ; those that are under forty 
shiUings a year in those that have forty shil- 
hngs a year; those of forty shiUings in the 
knights. 

All things are brought to the Parliament, 
little to the courts of justice : just as in a room 
where there is a banquet presented, if there be 
persons of quality there, the people must wait 
and stay till the great ones have done. 

The Parliament flying upon several men, 
and then letting them alone, does as a hawk 
that flies a covey of partridges, and when she 
has flown them a great way grows weary and 
takes a tree ; then the falconer lures her down, 
and takes her to his fist : on they go again, hei 
rctt! up springs another covey, away goes the 
hawk, and, as she did before, takes another 
tre^, etc. 

Dissenters in Parliament may at length come 
to a good end, though first there be a great deal 
of do and a great deal of noise which mad wild 
folks make: just as in brewing of wrest-beer, 
there's a great deal of business in grinding the 
malt, and that spoils any man's clothes that 
comes near it : then it must be mashed ; then 
comes a fellow in and drinks of the wort, and 
he's drunk ; then they make a great noise when 
they carry it into the cellar, and a twelvemonth 
after 'tis delicate fine beer. 

It must necessarily be that our distempers 
are worse than they were in the beginning of 
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Table-Talk 

the Parliament. If a physician comes to a sick 
man he lets him blood, it may be scarifies him, 
cups him, puts him into a great disorder, before 
he makes him well ; and if he be sent for to cure 
an ague, and he finds his patient hath many dis- 
eases, a dropsy, and a palsy, he applies reme- 
dies to them all, which makes the cure the 
longer and the dearer. This is the case. 

The Parliamentmen are as great princes as 
any in the world, when whatsoever they please 
is privilege of Parliament ; no man must know 
the number of their privileges, and whatsoever 
they dislike is breach of privilege. The duke 
of Venice is no more than Speaker of the 
House of Commons ; but the Senate at Venice 
are not so much as our Parliamentmen, nor 
have they that power over the people, who yet 
exercise the greatest tyranny that is anywhere. 
In plain truth, breach of privilege is only the 
actual taking away of a member of the House, 
the rest are offenses against the House : for 
example, to take out process against a Parlia- 
mentmen, or the like. 

The Parliament party, if the law be for them, 
they call for the law ; if it be against them, they 
will go to a Parliamentary way; if no law be 
for them, then for law again : like him that first 
called for sack to heat him, then small drink 
to cool his sack, then sack again to heat his 
small drink, etc. 

The Parliament party do not play fair in 
sitting up till two of the clock in the morn- 
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Discourses, or 

ing to vote something they have a mind to.* 
'Tis Hke a crafty gamester, that makes the 
company drunk, then cheats them of their 
money. Young men and infirm men go away. 
Besides, a man is not there to persuade other 
men to be of his mind, but to speak his own 
heart, and if it be hked, so ; if not, there's an 
end. [From this it is plain that the tactics of 
our later legislators are not new.] 

Parson. 

Though we write parson differently, yet 
'tis but person ; that is, the individual person 
set apart for the service of such a church ; and 
'tis in Latin persona, and pcrsonatus is a per- 
sonage. Indeed, with the canon lawyers, pcr- 
sonatus is any dignity or preferment in the 
Church. 

There never was a merry world since the 
fairies left dancing and the parson left conjur- 
ing. The opinion of the latter kept thieves in 
awe, and did as much good in a country as a 
justice of peace. 

Patience. 

Patience is the chiefest fruit of study. A 
man that strives to make himself a different 
thing from other men by much reading gains 
this chiefest good : that in all fortunes he hath 
something to entertain and comfort himself 

* The famous remonstrance was carried after sitting from 3 
A. M. to 3 P. M. which made some one say it was " the verdict 
of a starved jury." — S. 

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Table-Talk 

withal, [Hath he not also something to make 
himself wiser withal ?J 

Peace. 

King James was pictured going easily down 
a pair of stairs, and upon every step there was 
written, "Peace, Peace, Peace." The wisest 
way for men in these times is to say nothing. 

When a country wench cannot get her but- 
ter to come she says the witch is in her churn. 
We have been churning for peace a great while, 
and 'twill not come ; sure the witch is in it. 

Though we had peace, yet 'twill be a great 
while e'er things be settled. Though the wind 
lie, yet after a storm the sea will work a great 
while. [How well this was illustrated by our 
Civil War! That sea still works; and yet 
strangely enough, another war, the Spanish, 
has helped to settle these civil-war waves better 
than anything else could.] 

Penance. 

Penance is only the punishment inflicted, 
not penitence, which is the right word : a man 
comes not to do penance because he repents 
him of his sin, but because he is compelled to 
it ; he curses him and could kill him that sends 
him thither. The old canons wisely enjoined 
three years' penance, sometimes more, because 
in that time a man got a habit of virtue, and so 
committed that sin no more for which he did 
penance. 

155 



Discourses, or 

People. 

There is not anything in the world more 
abused than this sentence, vSa/wj popiili siiprema 
lex esto; for we apply it as if we ought to for- 
sake the known law when it may be most for 
the advantage of the people, when it means no 
such thing. For, first, 'tis not Saliis popiili 
suprenia lex est, but esto; it being one of the 
Laws of the Twelve Tables,* and after divers 
laws made, some for punishment, some for 
reward, then follows this, Sal us populi sii- 
prema lex esto; that is, in all the laws you 
make, have a special eye to the good of the 
people; and then what does this concern the 
way they now go ? 

Objection. He that makes one is greater 
than he that is made ; the people make the king, 
ergo, the people are greater than the king. 

Answer. This does not hold; for if I have 
one thousand pounds per annum, and give it 
you, and leave myself ne'er a penny, I made 
you ; but when you have my land you are greater 
than I. The parish makes the constable, and 
when the constable is made he governs the 

* It is probably a lapse of memory in Selden, or incorrectly 
related ; for this is not one of the Laws of the Twelve Tables, but 
among those which Cicero has set down for the government of 
his imaginary repubhc. (See De Legzbus, lib. iii, § 8. ) It seems 
to have forcibly impressed itself on Ammianus Marcellinus, 
who repeats it in substance more than once ; his words are 
" finis enim justi imperii, ut sapientes docent, utilitas obedien- 
tium asstimatur et salus." (Amm. Marcel, xxx, 8, and xxix, 3.) 
— S. 

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Table-Tai.k 

parish. The answer to all these doubts is, 
Have you agreed so? If you have, then it 
must remain till you have altered it. 

Pleasure. 

Pleasure is nothing else but the intermis- 
sion of pain ; the enjoying of something I am 
in great trouble for till I have it. 

'Tis a wrong way to proportion other men's 
pleasures to ourselves ; 'tis like a child's using 
a little bird, *'0 poor bird, thou shalt sleep with 
me ;" so lays it in his bosom, and stifles it with 
his hot breath : the bird had rather be in the 
cold air. And yet, too, 'tis the most pleasing 
flattery to like what other men like. 

'Tis most undoubtedly true that all men are 
equally given to their pleasure ; only thus, one 
man's pleasure lies one way and another's 
another. Pleasures are all alike, simply con- 
sidered in themselves : he that hunts, or he that 
governs the Commonwealth, they both please 
themselves alike, only we commend that where- 
by we ourselves receive some benefit ; as if a 
man place his delight in things that tend to the 
common good. He that takes pleasure to hear 
sermons enjoys himself as much as he that 
hears plays ; and could he that loves plays en- 
deavor to love sermons, possibly he might bring 
himself to it as well as to any other pleasure. 
At first it may seem harsh and tedious, but 
afterward 'twould be pleasing and delightful. 
So it falls out in that which is the great pleas- 
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Discourses, or 

lire of some men, tobacco; at first they could 
not abide it, and now they cannot be without it. 

While you are upon earth enjoy the good 
things that are here (to that end were they 
given), and be not melancholy, and wish your- 
self in heaven. If a king should give you the 
keeping of a castle with all things belonging to 
it, orchards, gardens, etc., and bid you use 
them ; withal promise you that, after twenty 
years, to remove you to the court and to make 
you a privy counselor; if you should neglect 
your castle, and refuse to eat of those fruits, 
and sit down, and whine, and wish you were a 
privy counselor, do you think the king would 
be pleased with you ? 

Pleasures of meat, drink, clothes, etc., are 
forbidden [only to] those that know not how 
to use them ; just as nurses cry pah! when they 
see a knife in a child's hand. They will never 
say anything to a man. [It is pleasant to see 
that Selden, though he lived in troublous times, 
and had lain for years in prison, took a cheer- 
ful view of life, and had a hopeful way of look- 
ing at things. He was no pessimist, but had 
the happy faculty of looking on the "bright 
side," and made the most of life.] 

Ppiilosophy. 

When men comfort themselves with philos- 
ophy, 'tis not because they have got two or 
three sentences, but because they have digested 
those sentences and made them their own : so 
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Table-Talk 

in reality philosophy is nothing but discre- 
tion. 

Poetry. 

Ovid was not only a fine poet, but, as a man 
may speak, a great canon lawyer, as appears in 
his Fasti, where we have more of the festivals 
of the old Romans than anywhere else; 'tis 
pity the rest are lost. 

There is no reason plays should be in verse, 
either in blank or rhyme ; only the poet has to 
say for himself that he makes something like 
that which somebody made before him. The 
old poets had no other reason but this, their 
verse was sung to music ; otherwise it had been 
a senseless thing to have fettered up them- 
selves.* 

I never converted but two. The one was 
Mr. Crashaw, [whom I converted] from writ- 
ing against plays by telling him a way how to 
understand that custom of putting on women's 
apparel, which has nothing to do with the busi- 
ness, as neither has it that the Fathers speak 
against plays ; for in their time it was with rea- 
son enough ; for they had real idolatries mixed 
with their plays, having three altars perpetu- 
ally upon the stage. The other was a doctor of 

* No one man can know all things ; even Selden here talks 
ignorantly. Verse is in itself a music, and the natural symbol 
of that union of passion with thought and pleasure which con- 
stitutes the essence of all poetry, as contradistinguished from 
history civil or natural. To Pope's Essay on Man — in short, to 
whatever is metrical good sense and wit — the remark applies. — 
Coleridge. 

11 159 



Discourses, or 

divinity, [whom I turned] from preaching 
against painting; which simply in itself is no 
more hurtful than putting on my clothes, or 
doing anything to make myself like other folks, 
that I may not be odious nor offensive to the 
company. Indeed if I do it with an ill inten- 
tion, it alters the case ; so, if I put on my gloves 
with an intention to do a mischief, I am a 
villain. 

[This is pleasant reading; for, in the first 
place, it shows that Selden was not an enemy 
of the acting drama, in which consisted per- 
haps the greatest literary work of his age ; and, 
in the second, that he defended it notwith- 
standing many unfitting things connected 
therewith, especially the practice of making 
boys play the parts of women. This is one of 
those surprising things to all readers of Shake- 
speare, that he should have been able to create 
such perfectly womenly women to be played 
by boys. But Shakespeare was wonderful in 
all things. The reference to the plays in the 
times of the Fathers points obviously to the 
Miracle Plays, which were indeed mixed with 
''real idolatries," and by no means of an edify- 
ing character. These were usually performed 
in the churches, wherein were the ''three 
altars" or three stages : the lower representing 
hell ; the middle, the earth ; and the upper, 
heaven. In these plays the chief personages of 
sacred history were presented, including the 

Devil, who furnished the comic element in 
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Table-Talk 

them, and from whom our circus clown of 
to-day is a. Hneal descendant. . . . The 
painting referred to by Selden is obviously the 
custom of painting the face, which was in his 
time, as it is in ours, not uncommon among 
other persons beside those on the stage. It is 
singular that he should have defended it, and 
it would be interesting to know who the "doc- 
tor of divinity" was whom he turned from 
preaching against it. The "Mr. Crashaw" is 
evidently the poet Richard Crashaw (1613- 
1650), styled "the divine," whose devotional 
strains exhibit imagination of a high order, 
and whose cast of thought, wealth of expres- 
sion, and richness of fancy, resemble those of 
George Herbert. Crashaw is the author of the 
famous line (sometimes attributed to Milton 
and to Dryden) touching the miracle of the 
water being turned into wine : 

"The conscious water saw its Lord and blushed." 

He studied at Oxford, entered the Church in 
1 64 1, and became an earnest and eloquent 
preacher; but in 1644 he was ejected from his 
fellowship by the Parliament for refusing to 
take the Covenant. Then he went to France, 
v^here he became a Roman Catholic. When 
Cowley came to Paris he found him there in 
great destitution, and, through the influence 
of Queen Henrietta Maria, procured him the 
position of secretary at Rome to Cardinal 
Palotta. The fate of this gifted man was a 
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very sad one. "He remained until 1649," says 
Mr. Gosse, in the Encyc. Brit., "in the service 
of the Cardinal, to whom he had a great per- 
sonal attachment ; but his retinue contained 
persons whose violent and licentious behavior 
was a source of ceaseless vexation to the sen- 
sitive English mystic. At last his denuncia- 
tion of their excesses became so public that the 
animosity of those persons was excited against 
him, and in order to shield him from their re- 
venge he was sent by the Cardinal in 1650 to 
Loretto, where he was made a canon of the 
Holy House. In less than three weeks, how- 
ever, he sickened of fever, and died, not with- 
out grave suspicion of having been poisoned." 
Is it any wonder that such a pure, gentle spirit 
should find something contrary to the fitness 
of things in boys "putting on women's ap- 
parel?" It needed all the logic of Selden to 
convince him that, as far as the merit of the 
plays themselves was concerned, this "had 
nothing to do with the business."] 

'Tis a fine thing for children to learn to make 
verse ; but when they come to be men they must 
speak Hke other men, or else they will be 
laughed at. 'Tis ridiculous to speak, or write, 
or preach in verse. As 'tis good to learn to 
dance ; a man may learn his leg [to bow] , learn 
to go handsomely, but 'tis ridiculous for him 
to dance when he should walk. 

'Tis ridiculous for a lord to print verses. 'Tis 
well enough to make them to please himself, 
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Table-Talk 

but to make them public is foolish. If a man 
in a private chamber twirls his band-strings 
or plays with a rush, to please himself, 'tis well 
enough; but if he should go into Fleet Street, 
and sit upon a stall and twirl a band-string, or 
play with a rush, then all the boys in the street 
would laugh at him. [What would Selden say 
if he were told that we now make a man a lord 
(Tennyson) because of the verses he has 
printed ! The reader may remember that Lord 
Chesterfield tells his son that "a. gentleman 
must not play or sing before other people" — 
indeed he thought it vulgar even to laugh 
aloud. But, like Moliere's doctor touching the 
position of the heart, we have long since 
''changed all that." Even in England a gen- 
tleman — though hardly a nobleman, who may 
be no gentleman — may now, without humilia- 
tion, play or sing before other people. Yet it is 
said all England was horrified when the Queen, 
in her own castle, accompanied the playing of 
a great pianist with her voice. It was not "in 
good form" — a blunder worse than a crime ! 
And I suppose it looked too much like Nero 
fiddling while Rome was burning.] 

Verse proves nothing but the quantity of 
syllables ; they are not meant for logic* 



* True ; they, that is, verses, are not logic ; but they are, or 
ought to be, the envoys and representatives of that vital passion 
which is the practical cement of logic ; and vi^ithout which logic 
must remain inert. — Coleridge. 

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Discourses, or 

Pope. 

A Pope's bull and a Pope's brief differ very 
much ; as with us the great seal and the privy 
seal. The bull being the highest authority the 
Pope can give, the brief is of less. The bull 
has a leaden seal upon silk, hanging upon the 
instrument ; the brief has sub annitlo piscatoris 
upon the side. 

He was a wise Pope that, when one that used 
to be merry with him, before he was advanced 
to the popedom, refrained afterward to come 
at him (presuming he was busy in governing 
the Christian world) ; the Pope sends for him, 
bids him come again, **and," says he, "we will 
be merry as we were before ; for thou little 
thinkest what a little foolery governs the whole 
world." 

The Pope, in sending relics to princes, does 
as wenches do by their wassails at New Year's 
tide ; they present you with a cup, and you must 
drink of a slabby stuff ; but the meaning is you 
must give them moneys, ten times more than 
it is worth. 

The Pope is infallible where he hath power 
to command ; that is, where he must be obeyed : 
so is every supreme power and prince. They 
that stretch his infallibility further do they 
know not what. 

When a Protestant and a Papist dispute 

they talk like two madmen, because they do 

not agree upon their principles. The one way 

is to destroy the Pope's power ; for if he hath 
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Table-Talk 

power to command me, 'tis not my alleging 
reasons to the contrary can keep me from 
obeying: for example, if a constable command 
me to wear a green suit to-morrow, and has 
power to make me, 'tis not my alleging a hun- 
dred reasons of the folly of it can excuse me 
from doing it. 

There was a time when the Pope had power 
here in England, and there was excellent use 
made of it ; for 'twas only to serve turns, as 
might be manifested out of the records of the 
kingdom, which divines know little of. If the 
king did not like what the Pope would have, 
he would forbid the Pope's legate to land upon 
his ground. So that the power was truly then 
in the king, though suffered in the Pope. But 
now that the temporal and the spiritual power 
(spiritual so called, because ordained to a 
spiritual end) spring both from one fountain, 
they are like to twist that. 

The Protestants in France bear office in the 
state because, though their religion be different, 
they acknowledge no other king but the king of 
France. The Papists in England they must 
have a king of their own, a Pope that must do 
something in our kingdom ; therefore there is 
no reason they should enjoy the same privi- 
leges. 

Amsterdam admits of all religions but Pa- 
pists, and 'tis upon the same account. The 
Papists, where'er they live, have another king 
at Rome. All other religions are subject to the 
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Discourses^ or 

present state, and have no prince elsewhere. 
[I suppose this was the chief reason why the 
CathoHcs were so long kept out of official posi- 
tions in England.] 

The Papists call our religion a Parliamen- 
tary religion ; but there was once, I am sure, a 
Parliamentary Pope. Pope Urban was made 
Pope in England by act of Parliament against 
Pope Clement. The act is not in the Book of 
Statutes, either because he that compiled the 
book would not have the name of the Pope 
there, or else he would not let it appear that 
they meddled with any such thing; but 'tis 
upon the Rolls. 

When our clergy preach against the Pope 
and the Church of Rome they preach against 
themselves, and crying down their pride, their 
power and their riches, have made themselves 
poor and contemptible enough ; they did it at 
first to please their prince, not considering 
what would follow. Just as if a man were to 
go a journey, and seeing, at his first setting 
out, the way clean and fair, ventures forth in 
his slippers, not considering the dirt and the 
sloughs a little further off, or how suddenly 
the weather may change. 

Popery, 

The demanding a noble for a dead body 
passing through a town came from hence in 
time of Popery : they carried the dead body 
into the church, where the priest said dirges, 



Table-Talk 

and twenty dirges at four pence apiece comes 
to a noble ; but now it is forbidden by an order 
from my lord marshal ; the heralds carry his 
warrant about them. 

We charge the prelatical clergy with Popery 
to make them odious, though we know they are 
guilty of no such thing: just as heretofore they 
called images mammets, and the adoration of 
images mammetry, that is, Mahomet and Ma- 
hometry; odious names, when all the world 
knows the Turks are forbidden images by their 
religion. 

Power, State. 

There is no stretching of power. 'Tis a 
good rule, eat within your stomach ; act within 
your commission. 

They that govern most make least noise. 
You see when they row in a barge, they that 
do drudgery work slash, and pufif, and sweat ; 
but he that governs sits quietly at the stern and 
scarce is seen to stir. 

vSyllables govern the world. 

All power is of God means no more than 

£dcs est servanda. When St. Paul said this 

the people had made Nero emperor. They 

agree, he to command, they to obey. Then 

God's ordinance comes in, and casts a hook 

upon them. Keep your faith : then comes in, All 

power is of God. Never king dropped out of 

the clouds. God did not make a new emperor, 

as the king makes a justice of peace. 

Christ himself was a great observer of the 
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Discourses, or 

civil power, and did many things only justifi- 
able because the state required it, which were 
things merely temporary, for the time that state 
stood. But divines make use of them to gain 
power to themselves ; as, for example, that of 
die Ecclesiae, tell the Church; there was then 
a sanhedrim, a court to tell it to, and therefore 
they would have it so now. 

In a troubled state we must do as in foul 
weather upon the Thames: not think to cut 
directly through, for so the boat may be quickly 
full of water ; but rise and fall as the waves do ; 
give as much as conveniently we can. [I sup- 
pose that is what he did himself: and I think 
he did wisely.] 

Prayer. 

If I were a minister, I should think myself 
most in my office reading of prayers, and dis- 
pensing the sacraments ; and 'tis ill done to put 
one to officiate in the Church whose person is 
contemptible out of it. Should a great lady, 
that was invited to be a gossip, send in her 
place her kitchen maid, 'twould be ill taken ; yet 
she is a woman as well as she : let her send her 
woman at least. 

You shall pray [that is, you shall pray thus, 
or so and so] is the right way, because, ac- 
cording as the Church is settled, no man may 
make a prayer in public of his own head. 

'Tis not the original Common-prayer book. 

Why, show me an original Bible, or an original 

Magna Charta. 

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Table-Talk 

Admit the preacher prays by the Spirit, yet 
that very prayer is Common-prayer to the peo- 
ple ; they are tied as much to his words as in 
saying, Almighty and most merciful Father. 
Is it then unlawful in the minister, but not un- 
lawful in the people? 

There were some mathematicians that could 
with one fetch of their pen make an exact cir- 
cle, and with the next touch point out the cen- 
ter ; is it therefore reasonable to banish all use 
of the compasses? Set forms are a pair of 
compasses. 

God hath given gifts unto men. General 
texts prove nothing: let him show me John, 
William, or Thomas in the text and then I will 
believe him. If a man hath a voluble tongue, 
we say he hath the gift of prayer. His gift is 
to pray long; that I see; but does he pray 
better? 

We take care what we speak to men, but to 
God we may say anything [that is, some people 
think they may say anything]. 

The people must not think a thought toward 
God but as their pastors will put it into their 
mouths ; they will make right sheep of us. 

The English priests would do that in Eng- 
lish which the Romish do in Latin, keep the 
people in ignorance ; but some of the people 
outdo them at their own game. 

Prayer should be short, without giving God 

Almighty reasons why he should grant this, 

or that ; he knows best what is good for us. If 
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Discourses, or 

your boy should ask you a suit of clothes, and 
give you reasons, "otherwise he cannot wait 
upon you, he cannot go abroad but he will dis- 
credit you," would you endure it? You know 
it better than he ; let him ask a suit of clothes. 

If a servant that has been fed with good beef 
goes into that part of England where salmon 
is plenty, at first he is pleased with his salmon, 
and despises his beef; but after he has been 
there a while he grows weary of his salmon, 
and wishes for his good beef again. We have 
a while been much taken with this praying by 
the Spirit ; but in time we may grow weary of 
it, and wish for our Common-prayer. 

'Tis hoped we may be cured of our extem- 
porary prayers the same way the grocer's boy 
is cured of his eating plums : when we have 
had our belly full of them. [So you see Selden 
was no Puritan, though he often sided with 
the Puritans. I have always thought the effect 
of the Common-prayer or Episcopal Liturgy 
depended upon him who read it. In the mouth 
of some clergymen it is absolutely touching, 
refreshing, and edifying ; in that of others, the 
reverse.] 

Preaching. 

Nothing is more mistaken than that speech, 
"Preach the Gospel ;" for 'tis not to make long 
harangues, as they do nowadays, but to tell 
the news of Christ's coming into the world; 
and when that is done, or where 'tis known 
alreadv, the preacher's work is done. 
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Table-Talk 

Preaching, in the first sense of the word, 
ceased as soon as ever the Gospel was written. 

When the preacher says, This is the meaning 
of the Holy Ghost in such a place, in sense he 
can mean no more than this : that is, I by study- 
ing of the place, by comparing one place with 
another, by weighing what goes before and 
what comes after, think this is the meaning of 
the Holy Ghost; and for shortness of expres- 
sion I say the Holy Ghost says thus, or this is 
the meaning of the Spirit of God. So the judge 
speaks of the king's proclamation, This is the 
intention of the king; not that the king had 
declared his intention any other way to the 
judge, but the judge, examining the contents 
of the proclamation, gathers by the purport of 
the words the king's intention ; and then for 
shortness of expression says, this is the king's 
intention. 

Nothing is text but what was spoken in the 
Bible, and meant there for person and place; 
the rest is application, which a discreet man 
may do well, but 'tis his Scripture, not the 
Holy Ghost's. 

Preaching by the Spirit (as they call it) is 
most esteemed by the common people because 
they cannot abide art or learning, which they 
have not been bred up in. Just as, in the busi- 
ness of fencing, if one country fellow among 
the rest has been at the school the rest will 
undervalue his skill, or tell him he wants 
valor: "You come with your school-tricks; 
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Discourses, or 

there's Dick Butcher has ten times more mettle 
than you :" so they say to the preachers, "You 
come with your school-learning; there's such 
a one has the Spirit." 

The tone in preaching does much in working 
upon the people's affections. If a man should 
make love in an ordinary, tone, his mistress 
would not regard him ; and therefore he must 
whine. If a man should cry Fire ! or Murder ! 
in an ordinary voice, nobody would come out 
to help him. 

Preachers will bring anything into the text. 
The young Masters of Arts preached against 
Non-Residency in the University; whereupon 
the heads made an order that no man should 
meddle with anything but what was in the text. 
The next day one preached upon these words : 
"Abraham begat Isaac." When he had gone a 
good way, at last he observed that Abraham 
was resident ; for if he had been Non-Resident 
he could never have begot Isaac; and so fell 
foul upon the Non-Residents.* 

I could never tell what often-preaching 
meant, after a Church is settled and we know 
what is to be done. Tis just as if a husband- 
man should once tell his servants what they are 
to do, when to sow, when to reap, and after- 



* In 1631 they began to preach against Laud's innovation at 
Oxford. Yea, their very texts gave offense : one preaching 
on Num. xiv, 6, " Let us make a captain and return into 
Egypt ; " another on Kings xiii, 2, " And he cried against the 
altar in the word of the Lord, and said, O altar, altar."— S. 
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Table-Talk 

ward one should come and tell them twice or 
thrice a day what they knew already : You 
must sow your wheat in October, you must 
reap your wheat in August, etc. 

The main argument why they would have 
two sermons a day is because they have two 
meals a day ; the soul must be fed as well as 
the body. But I may as well argue, I ought 
to have two noses because I have two eyes, or 
two mouths because I have two ears. What 
have meals and sermons to do one with an- 
other ? 

The things between God and man are but 
a few, and those, forsooth, we must be told 
often of ; but things between man and man are 
many ; those I hear of not above twice a year, 
at the Assizes, or once a quarter, at the Ses- 
sions ; but few come then ; nor does the minis- 
ter exhort the people to go at these times to 
learn their duty toward their neighbor. Often- 
preaching is, sure, to keep the minister in coun- 
tenance, that he may have something to do. 

In preaching they say more to raise men to 
love virtue than men can possibly perform, to 
make them do their best ; as, if you would teach 
a man to throw the bar, to make him put out 
his strength you bid him throw further than it 
is possible for him, or any man else: throw 
over yonder house. 

In preaching they do by men as writers of 
romances do by their chief knights, bring them 
into many dangers but still fetch them off: so 
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Discourses^ or 

they put men in fear of hell, but at last bring 
them to heaven. 

Preachers say, do as I say, not as I do. But 
if a physician had the same disease upon him 
that I have, and he should bid me do one thing, 
and he do quite another, could I believe him? 

Preaching the same sermon to all sorts of 
people is as if a schoolmaster should read the 
same lesson to his several forms: if he reads 
Aino, aiuas, amavi, the highest forms laugh at 
him, the younger boys admire him ; so 'tis in 
preaching to a mixed auditory. Objection. 
But it cannot be otherwise ; the parish cannot 
be divided into several forms : what must the 
preacher then do in discretion ? Anszvcr. Why 
then let him use some expressions by which 
this or that condition of people may know such 
doctrine does more especially concern them; 
it being so delivered that the wisest may be 
content to hear. For if he delivers it all to- 
gether and leaves it to them to single out what 
belongs to themselves (which is the usual 
way), 'tis as if a man would bestow gifts upon 
children of several ages, two years old, four 
years old, ten years old, etc., and there he 
brings tops, pins, points, ribbons, and casts 
them all in a heap together upon a table before 
them. Though the boy of ten years old knows 
how to choose his top, yet the child of two 
years old, that should have a ribbon, takes a 
pin, and the pin, e'er he be aware, pricks his 
fingers, and then all's out of order, etc. 
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Table-Talk 

Preaching for the most part is the glory of the 
preacher, to show himself a fine man. Cate- 
chizing would do much better. 

Use the best arguments to persuade, though 
but few understand; for the ignorant will 
sooner believe the judicious of the parish than 
the preacher himself; and they teach when 
they dissipate what he has said, and believe 
it the sooner, confirmed by men of their own 
side. For betwixt the laity and the clergy 
there is, as it were, a continual driving of a 
bargain ; something the clergy would still have 
us be at, and therefore many things are heard 
from the preacher with suspicion. They are 
afraid of some ends, which are easily assented 
to when they have it from some of themselves. 
'Tis with a sermon as 'tis with a play ; many 
come to see it who do not imderstand it, and 
yet, hearing it cried up by one whose judgment 
they cast themselves upon, and of power with 
them, they swear, and will die in it, that 'tis 
a very good play, which they would not have 
done if the priest himself had told them so. As 
in a great school 'tis not the master that teaches 
all ; the monitor does a great deal of work ; it 
may be the boys are afraid to see the master: 
so in a parish 'tis not the minister does all ; the 
greater neighbor teaches the lesser, the master 
of the house teaches his servant, etc. 

First in your sermons use your logic, and 
then your rhetoric. Rhetoric without logic is 
like a tree with leaves and blossoms but no 
13 175 



Discourses^ or 

root ; yet I confess more are taken with rhetoric 
than logic, because they are catched with a free 
expression when they understand not reason. 
Logic must be natural or it is worth nothing 
at all; your rhetoric figures may be learned. 
That rhetoric is best which is most seasonable 
and most catching. An instance we have in 
that old blunt commander at Cadiz, who 
showed himself a good orator; being to say 
something to his soldiers, which he was not 
used to do, he made them a speech to this pur- 
pose: "What a shame will it he, yoti English- 
men, that feed upon good beef and hrezvess, to 
let those rascally Spaniards heat yoii that eat 
nothing but oranges and lemons;" and so put 
more courage into his men than he could have 
done with a learned oration. Rhetoric is very 
good, or stark naught. There's no medium 
in rhetoric. If I am not fully persuaded I 
laugh at the orator. 

'Tis good to preach the same thing again ; 
for that's the way to have it learned. You 
teach a bird, by often whistling, to learn a tune, 
and a month after she will record it to herself. 

'Tis a hard case a minister should be turned 
out of his living for something they inform 
us he has said in his pulpit. We can no more 
know what a minister said in his sermon by 
two or three words picked out of it, than we 
can tell what tune a musician played last upon 
the lute, by two or three single notes. [Over- 
critical people should mark this.] 
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Table-Talk 

Predesti nation. 

They that talk nothing but predestination, 
and will not proceed in the way of heaven till 
they be satisfied in that point, do as a man that 
would not come to London unless at his first 
step he might set his foot upon the top of 
St. Paul's. 

For a young divine to begin in his pulpit 
with predestination is as if a man were coming 
into London and at his first step would think to 
set his foot, etc. 

Predestination is a point inaccessible, out of 
our reach ; we can make no notion of it ; 'tis so 
full of intricacy, so full of contradiction ; 'tis, 
in good earnest, as we state it, half a dozen 
bulls one upon another. 

Doctor Prideaux, in his Lectures, several 
days used arguments to prove predestination; 
at last he tells his auditory they are damned 
that do not believe it; doing herein just like 
schoolboys, when one of them has got an apple, 
or something the rest have a mind to, they use 
all the argum.ents they can to get some of it 
from him : ''I gave you some t'other day ;" 
*'You shall have some with me another time." 
When they cannot prevail they tell him he's a 
jackanapes, a rogue and a rascal. 

Preferment. 

When you would have a child go to such a 

place, and you find him unwilling, you tell him 

he shall ride a cock-horse, and then he will go 

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Discourses, or 

presently; so do those that govern the state 
deal by men to work them to their ends: they 
tell them they shall be advanced tO such or 
such a place, and they will do anything they 
would have them do. 

A great place strangely qualifies. John 
Read, groom of the chamber to my lord of 
Kent, was in the right. Attorney Noy being 
dead, some were saying, what would the king 
do for a fit man? *'Why, any man," says John 
Read, ''may execute the place." *'I warrant," 
says my lord, ''thou think'st thou understand'st 
enough to perform it." "Yes," quoth John ; 
"let the king make me Attorney, and I would 
fain see that man that durst tell me there's any- 
thing I understand not." 

When the pageants are a-coming there's a 
great thrusting and a-riding upon one another's 
backs, to look out at the window : stay a little 
and they will come just to you; you may see 
them quietly. So 'tis when a new statesman 
or ofiicer is chosen; there's great expectation 
and listening who it should be; stay a while 
and you may know quietly. 

Missing preferment makes the presbyters 
fall foul upon the bishops : men that are in 
hopes and in the way of rising keep in the 
channel, but they that have none seek new 
ways. 'Tis so among the lawyers ; he that 
hath the judge's ear will be very observant of 
the way of the court ; but he that hath no re- 
gard will be flving out. 
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Table-Talk 

My Lord Digby,''' having spoken something 
in the House of Commons for which they 
would have, questioned him, was presently 
called to the Upper House. He did by the 
Parliament as an ape when he hath done some 
waggery: his master spies him, and he looks 
for his whip, but before he can come at him, off 
flies the ape to the top of the house. [The 
promotion shut his mouth.] 

Some of the Parliament were discontented ; 
they wanted places at court which others 
had got; but when they had them once, then 
they were quiet. [Like Digby.] Just as at a 
christening, some that get no sugar plums, 
when the rest have, mutter and grumble ; pres- 
ently the wench comes again with her basket 
of sugar plums, and then they catch and scram- 
ble, and when they have got them, you hear no 
more of them. [Selden, like Cassius, was "3. 
great observer, and looked quite through the 
deeds of men." If the young reader does not 
profit by his observations, then I shall agree 
with his dictum, that ''no man is the wiser for 
his learning," and that "wit and wisdom are 
born with a man." You see, by these observa- 
tions of Selden, that the aims and objects, 
hopes and fears, of men and women, are pretty 
much the same as those of children, only on a 
larger scale. They are all trying to get some- 
thing; very few to give anything.] 

* Lore/ Digby. He spoke against Strafford's attainder, and 
was called up to the Lords, June lo, 1641. — S. See p. 116. 
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Discourses, or 

Presbytery. 

They that would bring in a new govern- 
ment would fain persuade us they meet it 
in antiquity. Thus they interpret presbyters, 
when they meet the word in the Fathers. Other 
professions likewise pretend to antiquity. The 
alchemist will find his art in Virgil's Aureus 
ramus, and he that delights in optics will find 
them in Tacitus. When Caesar came into Eng- 
land they would persuade us they had per- 
spective glasses by which he could discover 
what they were doing upon the land, because 
it is said, Positis spcculis : the meaning is. His 
watch or his sentinel discovered this and this 
unto him. 

Presbyters have the greatest power of any 
clergy in the world, and gull the laity most. 
For example ; admit there be twelve laymen to 
six presbyters, the six shall govern the rest as 
they please. First because they are constant, 
and the others come in like churchwardens in 
their turns, which is a huge advantage. Men 
will give way to them who have been in place 
before them. Next, the laymen have other 
professions to follow: the presbyters make it 
their sole business ; and besides, too, they learn 
and study the art of persuading: some of 
Geneva have confessed as much. 

The presbyter with his elders about him is 

like a young tree fenced about with two, or 

three, or four stakes ; the stakes defend it, and 

hold it up, but only the tree prospers and 

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Table-Talk 

flourishes. It may be some willow stake may 
bear a leaf or two, but it comes to nothing. 
Lay elders are stakes, the presbyter the tree 
that flourishes. 

When the queries were sent [by Parliament] 
to the Assembly concerning the jus divinum 
of Presbytery,* their asking time to answer 
them was a satire upon themselves; for if it 
were to be seen in the text they might quickly 
turn to the place and show us it. Their delay- 
ing: to answer makes us think there's no such 
thing there. They do just as you have seen a 
fellow do at a tavern reckoning: when he 
should come to pay his reckoning, he puts his 
hands into his pockets, and keeps a-grabbling 
and a- fumbling, and shaking; at last he tells 
you he has left his money at home, when all 
the company knew at first he had no money 
there ; for every man can quickly find his own 
money. 



* The Assembly met with many difficulties ; some complaining 
of Mr. Selden, that, advantaged by his skill in antiquity, common 
law, and the oriental tongues, he employed them rather to pose 
than profit, perplex than inform the members thereof — in the 
fourteen queries he proposed ; whose intent therein was to hum- 
ble thejuf-e-di'vifio-ship of Presbytery ; which though hinted and 
held forth, is not so made out in Scripture, but, being too scant 
on many occasions, it must be pieced with prudential additions. 
These queries being sent from Parliament to the Assembly it 
was ordered that in the answers proof from Scripture be set 
down with the several texts at large, in the express words of the 
same, etc. On receiving these queries the Assembly is in great 
perturbation, appoints a solemn fast, and a committee to con- 
sider the answers. — S. 

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Discourses, or 

Priests of Rome. 

The reason of the statute against priests 
was this : In the beginning of Queen EHzabeth 
there was a statute made that he that drew men 
from their civil obedience was a traitor. It 
happened this was done in privacies and con- 
fessions, where there could be no proof ; there- 
fore they made another act, that for a priest 
to be in England was treason, because they 
presumed that it was his business to fetch men 
off from their obedience. 

When Queen Elizabeth died, and King 
James came in, an Irish priest does thus ex- 
press it : Elizahctha in orciim detrusa, successit 
Jacobus, alter Haereticus. You will ask why 
they did use such language in their Church. 
Anszver. Why does the nurse tell the child of 
raw-head and bloody-bones but to keep it in 
awe? 

The Queen Mother and Count Rosset are to 
the priests and Jesuits like the honey-pot to the 
flies.* 

The priests of Rome aim but at two things : 
to get power from the king and money from 
the subject. 

When the priests come into a family they do 
as a man that would set fire to a house ; he does 
not put fire to the brick wall, but thrusts it into 



* T/ie Queen Mother and Rosset. Mary de Medicis was got 
out of England at last by the Parliament at ;^io,ooo expense, 
August 1641. — S. 

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Table-Talk 

the thatch. They work upon the women and 
let the men alone.* 

Prophecies. 

Dreams and prophecies do thus much good ; 
they make a man go on with boldness and 
courage upon a danger or a mistress : if he ob- 
tains, he attributes much to them ; if he mis- 
carries, he thinks no more of them, or is no 
more thought of himself. 

Proverbs, 

The proverbs of several nations were much 
studied by Bishop Andrews, and the reason 
he gave was because by them he knew the 
minds of several nations, which is a brave 
thing ; as we count him a wise man that knows 
the minds and insides of men, which is done 
by knowing what is habitual to them. Prov- 
erbs are habitual to a nation, being trans- 
mitted from father to son. [''One man's wit, 
and all men's wisdom," was Lord John Rus- 
sell's happy definition of a proverb.] 

Question. 

When a doubt is propounded, you must 
learn to distinguish and show wherein a thing 
holds, and wherein it doth not hold. Aye or 
no never answered any question. The not 
distinguishing where things should be dis- 

* See Michelet's late remarkable publication, Fn'esis, Women, 
and Fatm'lies. — S. 

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Discourses, or 

tinguished, and the not confounding where 
things should be confounded, is the cause of 
all the mistakes in the world. 

Reason. 

In giving reasons, men commonly do with 
us as the woman does with her child; when 
she goes to market about her business she tells 
it she goes to buy it a fine thing, to buy it a 
cake or some plums. They give us such rea- 
sons as they think we shall be catched withal, 
but never let us know the truth. 

When the schoolmen talk of Recto Ratio in 
morals, either they understand reason as it is 
governed by a command from above, or else 
they say no more than a woman when she says 
a thing is so because it is so ; that is, her reason 
persuades her 'tis so. The other acception has 
sense in it. As take a law of the land, I must 
not depopulate,* my reason tells me so. Why? 
Because if I do I incur the detriment. 

The reason of a thing is not to be inquired 
after till you are sure the thing itself be so. 
We commonly are at "What's the reason of 
it?" before we are sure of the thing. 'Twas 
an excellent question of my Lady Cotton, when 
Sir Robert Cotton was magnifying of a shoe 
which was [said to be] Moses's or Noah's, and 



* Depopulate. Depopiilatio agrorutn — a great offense in the 
ancient common law : pulling down, or leaving to ruin, farm- 
houses, cottages, etc., turning arable into pasture, etc. — S. 
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Table-Talk 

wondering at the strange shape and fashion of 
it : *'Biit, Mr. Cotton," says she, *'are you sure 
it is a shoe ?" 

Retaliation. 

"An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth." 
That does not mean, that if I put out another 
man's eye, therefore I must lose one of my 
own (for what is he the better for that?), 
though this be commonly received ; but it 
means, I shall give him what satisfaction an 
eye shall be judged to be worth. [Such were 
the penalties among the early Anglo-Saxons.] 

Reverence. 
'Tis sometimes unreasonable to look after 
respect and reverence, either from a man's own 
servant or other inferiors. A great lord and 
a gentleman talking together, there came a boy 
by, leading a calf with both his hands. Says the 
lord to the gentleman, ''You shall see me make 
the boy let go his calf ;" with that he came to- 
ward him, thinking the boy would have put off 
his hat, but the boy took no notice of him. 
The lord seeing that, "Sirrah," says he, "do 
you not know me, that you use no reverence?" 
"Yes," says the boy, "if your lordship will hold 
my calf I will put off my hat." 

Non-Residency. 

The people thought they had a great victory 
over the clergy when in Henry the Eighth's 
time they got their bill passed, that a clergyman 
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Discourses, or 

should have but two Hvings: before, a man 
might have twenty or thirty ; 'twas but getting 
a dispensation from the Pope's hmiter, or 
gatherer of the Peter Pence,"^ which was as 
easily got then as now you may have a license 
to eat flesh. 

As soon as a minister is made he hath power 
to preach all over the world, but the civil power 
restrains him : he cannot preach in this parish, 
or in that; there is one already appointed. 
Now if the state allows him two livings, then 
he hath two places where he may exercise his 
function, and so has the more power to do his 
office, which he might do everywhere if he were 
not restrained. 

Religion. 

King James said to the fly, "Have I three 
kingdoms, and thou must needs fly into my 
eye?" Is there not enough to meddle with 
upon the stage, or in love, or at the table, but 
religion ? 

Religion among men appears to me like the 
learning they get at school. Some men forget 
all they learned, others spend upon the stock, 
and some improve it. So some men forget all 
the religion that was taught them when they 
were young, others spend upon that stock, and 
some improve it. 

* Peter-Pence. A levy of one penny to the Pope on every 
chimney that smoked— so called hearth-penny, smoke-penny, 
etc., granted by Ine or Athelulph.— S. [Peter-Pence are now 
levied for other things than " chimneys that smoked."] 

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Table-Talk 

Religion is like the fashion : one man wears 
his doublet slashed, another laced, another 
plain ; but every man has a doublet. So every 
man has his religion. We differ about trim- 
ming.* 

Men say they are of the same religion, for 
quietness' sake ; but if the matter were well ex- 
amined you would scarce find three anywhere 
of the same religion in all points. [Never was 
a truer sentence uttered. Every thinking man 
has his own religion ; even IngersoU had his 
own faith. But the latter held not his for 
quietness' sake.] 

Every religion is a [money] getting re- 
ligion ; for though I myself get nothing I am 
subordinate to those that do. So you may find 
a lawyer in the Temple that gets little for the 
present ; but he is fitting himself to be in time 
one of those great ones that do get. 

Alteration of religion is dangerous, because 
we know not where it will stay. 'Tis like a 
millstone that lies upon the top of a pair of 
stairs ; 'tis hard to remove it, but if once it be 
thrust off the first stair it never stays till it 
comes to the bottom. 

Question. Whether is the Church or the 
Scripture judge of religion? Anszver. In truth 
neither, but the state. I am troubled with a 
boil; I call a company of chirurgeons about 



* May not this have afforded a hint to Swift for T/ie Tale of 
a Tud?—S. 

187 



Discourses, or 

me ; one prescribes one thing, another another ; 
I single out something I hke, and ask you that 
stand by, who are no chirurgeon, what think 
you of it. You hke it too ; you and I are judges 
of the plaster, and we bid them prepare it, and 
there's an end. Thus 'tis in religion: the 
Protestants say they will be judged by the 
Scriptures; the Papists say so too; but that 
cannot speak. A judge is no judge except he 
can both speak and command execution ; but 
the truth is they never intend to agree. No 
doubt the Pope, where he is supreme, is to be 
judge; if he say we in England ought to be 
subject to him, then he must draw his sword 
and make it good. 

By the law was the Manuak'' received into 
the Church before the Reformation ; not by the 
civil law, that had nothing to do in it ; nor by 
the canon law, for that Manual that was here 
was not in France, nor in Spain; but by cus- 
tom, which is the common law of England ; 
and custom is but the elder brother to a Par- 
liament: and so it will fall out to be nothing 
that the Papists say ours is a Parliamentary 
religion, by reason the service-book was estab- 
lished by act of Parliament, and never any 
service-book was so before. That will be noth- 
ing that the Pope sent the Manual ; 'twas ours, 
because the state received it. The state still 
makes the religion, and receives into it what 
will best agree with it. Why are the Venetians 

* A service-book published before the Reformation. 
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Table-Talk 

Roman Catholics? because the state Hkes the 
reHgion ; all the world knows they care not 
three pence for the Pope. The Council of 
Trent is not at this day admitted in France. 

Papist. Where was your religion before 
Luther, a hundred years ago? Protestant. 
Where was America a hundred or sixscore 
years ago? Our religion was where the rest 
of the Christian Church was. Papist. Our 
religion continued ever since the Apostles, and 
therefore 'tis better. Protestant. So did ours. 
That there was an interruption of it will fall 
out to be nothing, no more than if another earl 
should tell me of the Earl of Kent ; saying, He 
[the other earl] is a better earl than he, because 
there was one or two of the family of Kent did 
not take the title upon them ; yet all that while 
they were really earls ; and afterward as great 
a prince declared them to be earls of Kent as 
he that made the other family an earl. [This 
recalls Sir Henry Wotton's clever answer to a 
Romish priest who asked him, "Where was 
your religion before Luther?" "Where yours 
is not now," answered Sir Henry ; "in the Holy 
Scriptures."] 

Disputes in religion will never be ended, 
because there wants a measure by which the 
business would be decided. The Puritan would 
be judged by the word of God. If he would 
speak clearly he means himself, but he is 
ashamed to say so ; and he would have me be- 
lieve him before a whole Church, that has read 
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Discourses, or 

the word of God as well as he. One says one 
thing, and another another ; and there is, I say, 
no measure to end the controversy. 'Tis just 
as if two men were at bowls, and both judged 
by the eye. One says 'tis his cast, the other 
says 'tis my cast ; and having no measure, the 
difference is eternal. Ben Jonson satirically 
expressed the vain disputes of divines, by Inigo 
Lanthorn disputing with his puppet in Bar- 
tholoinczv Fair: It is so; It is not so: It is so; 
It is not so : crying thus one to another a quar- 
ter of an hour together. 

In matters of religion, to be ruled by one that 
writes against his adversary, and throws all 
the dirt he can in his face, is as if in point of 
good manners a man should be governed by 
one whom he sees at cuffs with another, and 
thereupon thinks himself bound to give the 
next man he meets a box on the ear. 

'Tis to no purpose to labor to reconcile re- 
ligions when the interest of princes will not 
suffer it. 'Tis well if they could be reconciled 
so far that they should not cut one another's 
throats. 

There's all the reason in the world divines 
should not be suffered to go a hair beyond their 
bounds, for fear of breeding confusion, since 
there now be so many religions on foot. The 
matter was not so narrowly to be looked after 
when there was but one religion in Christen- 
dom : the rest would cry him down for a here- 
tic, and there was nobody to side with him. 
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Table-Talk 

We look after religion as the butcher did 
after his knife, when he had it in his mouth. 

Religion is made a juggler's paper: now 'tis 
a horse, now 'tis a lantern, now 'tis a boar, 
now 'tis a man. To serve ends, religion is 
turned into all shapes. 

' Pretending religion and the law of God is to 
set all things loose. When a man has no mind 
to do something he ought to do by his contract 
with man, then he gets a text, and interprets it 
as he pleases, and so thinks to get loose. 

Some men's pretending religion is like the 
roaring boys'* way of challenges : their "repu- 
tation is dear ; it does not stand with the honor 
of a gentleman ;" when, God knows, they have 
neither honor nor reputation about them. 

They talk much of settling religion : religion 
is well enough settled already, if we would let 
it alone. Methinks we might look after other 
things. 

If men would say they took arms for any- 
thing but religion, they might be beaten out of 
it by reason : out of that they never can, for 
they will not believe you, whatever you say. 

The very arcanum of pretending religion in 
all wars is that something may be found out in 
which all men have an interest. In this [war] 
the groom has as much interest as the lord. 
Were it for land, one with one thousand acres 



* Roaring Boys. The swashbucklers or bullying bucks of 
Charles's time. — S, 

13 191 



Discourses, or 

and the other but one, he [that has but one 
acre] would not venture so far as he that has 
a thousand. But rehgion is equal to both 
[makes the interest of both equal]. Had all 
men land alike, by a lex agraria, then all men 
would say they fought for land. [Does not 
this chapter remind the reader of Lessing in 
Nathan the Wise? May he not have taken 
a hint from it ?] 

Sabbath. 

Why should I think all the fourth com- 
mandment belongs to me when all the fifth 
does not? What land will the Lord give me 
for honoring my father ? It was spoken to the 
Jews with reference to the land of Canaan; 
but the meaning is, If I honor my parents God 
will also bless me. We read the Command- 
ments in the Church service as we do David's 
Psalms ; not that all there concerns us, but a 
great deal of them does. 

Sacrament. 

Christ suffered Judas to take the Commun- 
ion. Those ministers that keep their parish- 
ioners from it, because they will not do as they 
will have them, revenge rather than reform. 

No man can tell whether I am fit to receive 

the vSacrament ; for though I were fit the day 

before, when he examined me, at least appeared 

so to him, yet how can he tell what sin I have 

committed that night, or the next morning, or 
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Table-Talk 

what impious atheistical thoughts I may have 
about me when I am approaching the very 
table? [Do not the most liberal Christians 
now think in this way? Should not any poor 
Christian who desires to do so partake of the 
Lord's Supper?] 

Salvation. 

We can best understand the meaning of 
G0)r7]Qia, salvation, from the Jews, to whom the 
vSaviour was promised. They held that them- 
selves should have the chief place of happiness 
in the other world ; but the Gentiles that were 
good men should likewise have their portion 
of bliss there too. Now by Christ the partition 
wall is broken down, and the Gentiles that be- 
lieve in him are admitted to the same place of 
bliss with the Jews ; and why then should not 
that portion of happiness still remain to them 
who do not believe in Christ, so they be morally 
good? This is a charitable opinion. [Roger 
Williams himself, who first proclaimed the 
right of every man to worship God as he 
thought fit, could not have uttered a more 
charitable opinion.] 

State. 

In a troubled state, save as much for your 
own as you can. A dog had been at market to 
buy a shoulder of mutton; coming home he 
met two dogs, by the way, that quarreled with 
him ; he laid down his shoulder of mutton, and 
193 



Discourses, or 

fell to fighting with one of them ; in the mean- 
time the other dog fell to eating his mutton; 
he seeing that, left the dog he was fighting 
with, and fell upon him that was eating; then 
the other dog fell to eat: when he perceived 
there was no remedy, but which of them so- 
ever he fought withal his mutton was in dan- 
ger, he thought he would have as much of it as 
he could, and thereupon gave over fighting, 
and fell to eating himself. [Here spoke the 
cautious lawyer — he would not lose all, even 
for the state's sake, if he could help it. When 
all is going to ruin, and the ship is sinking fast, 
save what you can of your own. "Saiive qui 
peutr were the last words of Napoleon at 
Waterloo.] 

Superstition. 

They that are against superstition often- 
times run into it of the wrong side. If I will 
wear all colors but black, then am I supersti- 
tious in not wearing black. 

They pretend not to abide the cross* [on 
coins], because 'tis superstitious; for my part 
I will believe them when I see them throw their 
money out of their pockets, and not till then. 

If there be any superstition, truly and prop- 

* It will be remembered that on the old coins the reverse had 
generally the device of a cross^ hence the French phrase of 
'• Jouer croix et pile" for to play at tossing for heads or tails. 
So in "As You Like It," ii. 4: ^'■Touch. For my part I had 
rather bear with you than bear .you ; yet I should bear no cross 
if I did bear you ; for I think you have no money in your 
purse." — S. 

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Table-Talk 

erly so called, 'tis their observing the Sabbath 
after the Jewish manner. 

Ship Money. 

Mr. Noy brought in ship money first for 
maritime towns ; but that was like putting in a 
little auger that afterward you may put in a 
greater. He that pulls down the first brick 
does the main work ; afterward 'tis easy to pull 
down the wall. 

They that at first would not pay ship money, 
till it was decided, did like brave men, though 
perhaps they did no good by the trial ; but they 
that stand out since, and suffer themselves to 
be distrained, never questioning those that do 
it, do pitifully, for so they only pay twice as 
much as they should.* 

Thanksgiving. 

At first we gave thanks for every victory as 
soon as ever 'twas obtained ; but since we have 
had many, now we can stay a good while. We 
are just like a child : give him a plum, he makes 
his bow; give him a second plum, he makes 
another bow ; at last, when his belly is full, he 



* Selden evidently doubted whether Hampden's contest 
ao:ainst the payment of ship money, though praiseworthy and 
correct, was of any benefit to the country, and we may consider 
that his doubt was founded upon a just fear that it would aggra- 
vate the growing enmity between the people and the sovereign, 
and would involve in one feeling of dislike all the constituted 
branches of the executive. — Johnson's Memoirs of Seldeit. 
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Discourses, or 

forgets what he ought to do; then his nurse, 
or somebody else that stands by him, puts him 
in mind of his duty : Where's your bow ? [We 
are all likely to forget the good things God 
grants us when we are full of them. It is when 
we are in need that we think of and appeal to 
Him. Yet the Puritans made Thanksgiving 
day.] 

Tithes. 

What if the Pope gave the tithes to any 
man, must they therefore be taken away? If 
the Pope gives me a jewel will you therefore 
take it away from me ? 

Abraham paid tithes to Melchizedeck. What 
then ? 'Twas very well done of him ; it does 
not follow therefore that I must pay tithes, no 
more than I am bound to imitate any other 
action of Abraham's. 

'Tis ridiculous to say the tithes are God's 
part, and therefore the clergy must have them. 
Why. so they are if the layman has them. 'Tis 
as if one of my Lady Kent's maids should be 
sweeping this room, and another of them 
should come and take away the broom, and give 
for a reason why she should part with it, 'Tis 
my lady's broom. As if it were not my lady's 
broom, which of them soever had it. 

They consulted in Oxford where they might 

find the best argument for their tithes, setting 

aside the jtis divimivi; they were advised to 

my History of Tithes; a book so much cried 

down by them formerly; in which, I dare 
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Table-Talk 

boldly say, there are more arguments for them 
than are extant together anywhere. Upon this, 
one writ me word that my History of Tithes 
was now become like Pelias' hasta,'^ to wound 
and to heal. I told him in my answer, I thought 
I could fit him with a better instance. 'Twas 
possible it might undergo the same fate that 
Aristotle, Avicen, and Averroes did in France, 
some five hundred years ago ; which were ex- 
communicated by Stephen, Bishop of Paris (by 
that very name, excommunicated), because 
that kind of learning puzzled and troubled their 
divinity ; but finding themselves at a loss, some 
forty years after (which is much about the 
time since I writ my history) they were called 
in again, and so have continued ever since. 

[In his History of Tithes Selden drew no 
conclusion as to the nature or the divine right 
of tithes, but he had so arranged his authori- 
ties as to render a just conclusion inevitable. 
So far, however, from injuring the clergy, he 
had strengthened their cause by placing the 
right to tithes upon the same footing as any 
ordinary right to property But as soon as the 
work appeared it was attacked, and its author 
had to appear before the High Commission 
court, to whom he expressed his regret that he 
"had afforded any occasion of argument 
against any right of maintenance jure divino of 



* Pelias' hasta. The spear of Achilles, which was necessary to 
cure the wound it had inflicted on Telephus. — S. 
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Discourses, or 

the ministers of the Gospel." The work re- 
ceived several answers, but Selden was forbid- 
den, under a threat of imprisonment by James 
the First, to answer his assailants. He com- 
plains justly of being abused and attacked on 
all sides while his own hands were tied ; so 
completely tied that he hardly ventured even 
to say that he was abused. This was the kind 
of liberty enjoyed under the Stuarts, some of 
whom, especially the martyr Charles I., are still 
venerated by certain silly persons even in our 
own country.] 

Trade. 

There is no prince in Christendom but is 
directly a tradesman, though in another way 
than an ordinary tradesman. For example: I 
have a man ; I bid him lay out twenty shillings 
in such commodities; but I tell him for every 
shilling he lays out I will have a penny. I 
trade as well as he. This every prince does in 
his customs. [That is, in his custom-house. 
This is a fine hit at those silly gentry who think 
themselves superior to those persons who are 
engaged in trade.] 

That which a man is bred up in he thinks no 
cheating; as your tradesman thinks not so of 
his profession, but calls it a mystery. Where- 
as, if you would teach a mercer to make his 
silks heavier than what he has been used to, 
he would peradventure think that to be cheat- 
ing. 

Every tradesman professes to cheat me that 
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Table-Talk 

asks for his commodity twice as much as it is 
worth. [That is, acknowledges that he cheats 
me; but so do not the princes in their customs 
or duties.] 

Tradition. 

Say what you will against tradition ; we 
know the signification of words by nothing but 
tradition. You wall say the Scripture was 
written by the Holy Spirit ; but do you under- 
stand that language 'twas writ in ? No. Then, 
for example, take these words : In principio 
erat verbum. How do you know these words 
signify, "In the beginning was the Word," but 
by tradition, because somebody has told you 
so? 

Transubstantiation. 

The Fathers, using to speak rhetorically, 
brought up Transubstantiation: as if because 
it is commonly said, Ajiiiciis est alter idem [a 
friend is another exactly similar], one should 
go about to prove a man and his friend are all 
one. That opinion is only rhetoric turned into 
logic. 

There is no greater argument (though not 
used) against Transubstantiation than the 
apostles at their first council forbidding blood 
and suffocation. Would they forbid blood, and 
yet enjoin the eating of blood too ? 

The best w^ay for a pious man is to address 

himself to the Sacrament with that reverence 

and devotion as if Christ were really there 

present. [A good sermon in a sentence.] 
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Discourses, or 

Traitor. 
'Tis not seasonable to call a man traitor that 
has an army at his heels. One with an army is 
a gallant man. My Lady Cotton was in the 
right when she laughed at the Duchess of 
Richmond for taking such state upon her when 
she could command no forces. *'She a Duch- 
ess ! there's in Flanders a Duchess indeed ;" 
meaning the Arch-duchess [who had an army 
at her heels] . 

Truth. 

The Aristotelians say, All truth is contained 
in Aristotle in one place or another. Galileo 
makes Simplicius say so, but shows the absurd- 
ity of that speech, by answering, All truth is 
contained in a lesser compass : in the alphabet. 
Aristotle is not blamed for mistaking some- 
times, but Aristotelians for maintaining those 
mistakes. They should acknowledge the good 
they have from him, and leave him when he is 
in the wrong. There never breathed that per- 
son to whom mankind was more beholden. 

The way to find out the truth is by others' 
mistakings ; for if I was to go to such a place, 
and one had gone before me on the right hand, 
and he was out; another had gone on the left 
hand, and he was out ; this would direct me to 
keep the middle way, which peradventure 
would bring me to the place I desired to go. 
[This is why I consider biography one of the 
most useful kinds of reading.] 

In troubled water you can scarce see your 

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Table-Talk 

face, or see it very little, till the water be quiet 
and stand still. So in troubled times you can 
see little truth. When times are quiet and set- 
tled, then truth appears. 

Trial. 

Trials are by one of these three ways: by 
confession, or by demurrer — that is, confessing 
the fact, but denying it to be that wherewith a 
man is charged : for example, denying it to be 
treason, if a man be charged with treason — or 
by a jury. 

Ordaliimi was a trial; and was either by 
going over nine red-hot plowshares, as in the 
case of Queen Emma, accused for lying with 
the Bishop of Winchester, over which she 
being led blindfold, and having passed all her 
irons, asked when she should come to her trial ; 
or 'twas by taking a red-hot colter in a man's 
hand, and carrying it so many, steps, and then 
casting it from him. As soon as this was done 
the hands or the feet were to be bound up, and 
certain charms to be said, and a day or two 
after to be opened : if the parts were whole the 
party was judged to be innocent ; and so on the 
contrary. 

The rack is used nowhere as in England.* 

* It is commonly believed the rack was not used in England 
later than 1619, when Peacham, suspected of treason, was racked 
by order of the Privy Council. But Mr. Jardine quotes from 
the Council Book a series of warrants for torture from Edward 
the Sixth down to 1640. The twelve judges declared it was 
against the law, in Felton's case. — S. 
201 



Discourses, or 

In other countries 'tis used in judicature when 
there is a scmiplena prohatio, a half proof 
against a man ; then, to see if they can make it 
full, they rack him if he will not confess. But 
here in England they take a man and rack him, 
I do not know why, nor when ; not in time of 
judicature, but when somebody bids. 

Some men before they come to their trial are 
cozened to confess upon examination. Upon 
this trick they are made to believe somebody 
has confessed before them ; and then they think 
it a piece of honor to be clear and ingenuous, 
and that destroys them. [It is easy to see by 
this that the humane Selden condemned the 
rack, which Lord Bacon allowed in the case of 
Peacham. While the "cozening to confess" is, 
in certain cases, doubtless still in use, the rack 
was abolished, or declared contrary to the law 
of England, in 1638. The ordaliiim, or trial 
by ordeal (German, iirtheil, judgment), was 
one of the terrible practices of the ''good old 
times," not only in Europe, but in Asia and 
Africa, whence it was derived. It continued 
as late as 1498 on the Continent, but was abol- 
ished about 1350 in England. It was sanc- 
tioned by both the law and the Church, and 
was practiced in a hundred ways — by fire, by 
water, by poison, by lot, by wager of battle, 
and so on — so that if an accused person could 
overcome any or all of these, applied in the 
most deadly shape, he was innocent ; if not, he 
was guilty. Must not our children be informed 
202 



Table-Talk 

of all these things before they can appreciate 
the law and the liberty we now have? We 
learn best by comparison .and by contrast.] 

University. 

The best argument why Oxford should have 
precedence of Cambridge is the act of Parlia-' 
ment by which Oxford is made a body, made 
what it is, and Cambridge is made what it is ; 
and in the act it takes place. Besides Oxford 
has the best monuments to show. 

'Twas well said by one, hearing of a history 
lecture to be founded in the university : Would 
to God, says he, they would direct a lecture 
of discretion there ; this would do more good 
a hundred times. 

He that comes from the university to govern 
the state, before he is acquainted with the men 
and manners of the place, does just as if one 
should come into the presence chamber all 
dirty, with his boots on, his riding coat and 
his hat all daubed. These may serve him well 
enough on the road ; but when he comes to 
court he must conform to the place. 

Vows. 

Suppose a man find by his own inclination 

he has no mind to marry, may he not then vow 

chastity? Anszver. If he does, what a fine 

thing hath he done ! 'tis as if a man did not 

love cheese, and then he would vow to God 

Almighty never to eat cheese. He that vows 
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Discourses, or 

can mean no more in common sense than this : 
to do his utmost endeavor to keep his vow. 
[And is this vow more easily kept than other 
vows? Macaulay cahs the love between the 
sexes ''the master passion of human nature." 
'Tis in this item chiefly that some of our best 
and greatest men have sinned.] 

Usury. 

The Jews were forbidden to take use one of 
another, but they were not forbidden to take 
it of other nations. That being so, I see no 
reason why I may not as well take use for my 
money as rent for my house. 'Tis a vain thing 
to say money begets not money; for that no 
doubt it does. 

Would it not look odd to a stranger that 
should come into this land, and hear in our 
pulpits usury preached against, and yet the 
law allow it ? Many men use it ; perhaps some 
Churchmen themselves. No bishop nor eccle- 
siastical judge, that pretends power to punish 
other faults, dares punish, or at least does pun- 
ish, any man for doing it.''^ 



* Taking use or interest for money was then termed usury, 
and was considered, if not criminal, at least hateful. The 
reader may turn to Lord Bacon's forty-first Essay, which is on 
this subject, to see with what caution he ventures to speak 
of "the commodities of usury," and he will be amused with 
some of the arguments against it. — S. [All of which shows 
that Selden took a bolder and more sensible view of the sub- 
ject than Bacon.] 

204 



Table-Talk 

Pious Uses. 
The ground of the ordinary's'*' taking part 
of a man's estate, who died without a will, to 
pious uses, was this : to give it somebody to 
pray that his soul might be delivered out of 
purgatory. Now the pious uses come into his 
own pocket. 'Twas well expressed by John 
O' Fowls in the play, who acted the priest. One 
that was to be hanged, being brought to the 
ladder, would fain have given something to the 
poor; he feels for his purse (which John 
O'Powls had picked out of his pocket before). 
Missing it, he cries out he has lost his purse, 
now he intended to have given something to 
the poor. John O'Powls bid him be pacified, 
for the poor had it already. 

War. 

Do not undervalue an enemy by whom you 
have been worsted. When our countrymen 
came home from fighting with the Saracens, 
and were beaten by them, they pictured them 
with huge, big, terrible faces (as you still see 
the sign of the Saracen's head is), when in 
truth they were like other men. But this they 
did to save their own credit. 

Martial Lawf in general means nothing but 

* The ordinary of Newgate is a clergyman who attends on 
condemned malefactors to prepare them for death. The play- 
referred to in this paragraph is Marston's Dutch Courtezan. 
— W. 

\ Martial law. This was one of the chief grievances com- 
plained of in the Petition of Right, debated many days in Par- 
205 



Discourses, or 

the martial law of this or that place : with us 
it is to be used in fervore belli, in the face of 
the enemy, not in time of peace ; then they can 
take away neither limb nor life. The com- 
manders need not complain for want of it, be- 
cause our ancestors have done gallant things 
without it. 

Question. Whether subjects may take up 
arms against their prince? Anszver. Conceive 
it thus : here lies a shilling betwixt you and me ; 
ten pence of the shilling is yours, two pence is 
mine, by agreement ; I am as much king of my 
two pence as you of your ten pence. If you 
therefore go about to take away my two pence 
I will defend it, for there you and I are equal, 
both princes. 

Or thus : two supreme powers meet ; one says 
to the other, give me your land ; if you will not, 
I will take it from you; the other, because he 
thinks himself too weak to resist him, tells him, 
of nine parts I will give you three, so I may 
quietly enjoy the rest, and I will become your 
tributary. Afterward the first comes to ex- 
act six parts, and leaves but three ; the contract 
then is broken, and they are in enmity again. 

To know what obedience is due to the prince 

liament, and Selden one of the chief speakers. Charles had 
billeted his soldiers illegally on his subjects ; any crimes, vio- 
lence, etc., those soldiers should commit, to be punished by 
martial law — whereby many were illegally executed, and many, 
acquitted by the martial law, evaded the surer process of the 
common law. Great outrage and violence prevailed ; the roads 
were not safe, markets unfrequented, etc. — S. 
206 



Table-Talk 

you must look into the contract betwixt him 
and his people ; as, if you would know what 
rent is due from the tenant to the landlord, you 
must look into the lease. When the contract 
is broken, and there is no third person to judge, 
then the decision is by arms. This is the case 
between the prince and the subject. 

Question. What law is there to take up arms 
against the prince, in case he break his cove- 
nant? Anszver. Though there be no written 
law for it, yet there is custom, which is the best 
law of the kingdom ; for in England they have 
always done it. There is nothing expressed, 
between the King of England and the King of 
France, that if either invades the other's ter- 
ritory the other shall take up arms against him ; 
and yet they do it upon such an occasion. 

'Tis all one to be plundered by a troop of 
horse or to have a man's goods taken from him 
by an order from the council table. To him 
that dies, 'tis all one whether it be by a penny 
halter or a silk garter; yet I confess the silk 
garter pleases more; and, like trout, we love 
to be tickled to death. [All this, it will be ob- 
served, is a strong argument against the king 
and in favor of the Parliament. The king had 
broken his contract, and made "the decision 
by arms."] 

The soldiers say they fight for honor, when 

the truth is they have their honor in their 

pocket ; and they mean the same thing that 

pretend to fight for religion. Just as a parson 
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Discourses, or 

goes to law with his parishioners ; he says, for 
the good of his successors, that the Church 
may not lose its right ; when the meaning is, to 
get the tithes into his own pocket. 

We govern this war as an unskillful man 
does a casting net : if he has not the right trick 
to cast the net off his shoulder, the leads will 
pull him into the river. I am afraid we shall 
pull ourselves into destruction. 

We look after the particulars of a battle be- 
cause we live in the very time of war ; whereas 
of battles past we hear nothing but the number 
slain. Just as with the death of a man : when he 
is sick we talk how he slept this night, and that 
night, what he ate, and what he drank: but 
when he is dead, we only say he died of a fever, 
or name his disease, and there's an end. 

Boccaline* has this passage of soldiers. 
They came to Apollo to have their profession 
made the eighth liberal science, which he 
granted. As soon as it was noised up and down 
it came to the butchers, and they desired their 
profession might be made the ninth: for, say 
they, thb soldiers have this honor for the killing 
of men; now we kill, as well as they, but we 
kill beasts for the preserving of men, and why 
should not we have honor likewise done to us? 
Apollo could not answer their reasons, so he 
reversed his sentence and made the soldier's 

* Ragguagli di Parnasso, Centuria I, cap. Ixxv. This book 
seems to have been a favorite with Selden ; he has cited it else- 
where. It was extremely popular for its wit and satire. — S. 
208 



Table-Talk 

trade a mystery, as the butcher's is. [So there 
are but seven Hberal sciences ; what are they ?] 

Witches.* 

The law against witches does not prove 
there be any ; but it punishes the maHce of those 
people that use such means [in an endeavor] 
to take away men's lives. If one should pro- 
fess that by turning his hat thrice, and crying 
buzz, he could take away a man'sjife, though in 
truth he could do no such thing, yet this were 
a just law made by the state : that whosoever 
should turn his hat thrice, and cry buzz, with an 
intention to take away a man's life, shall be put 
to death. [This seems severe; but remember 



* There is a remarkable coincidence of opinion on the justice 
of punishing witchcraft between Selden and Hobbes. " As for 
witches, I think not that their witchcraft is any real power ; 
but yet that they are justly punished for the false beliefe they 
have that they can do such mischiefe, joyned with their purpose 
to do it if they can ; their trade being nearer to a new religion 
than to a craft or science." — Levt'athafi^ p. 7, ed. 165 1. 

This, however, would only apply to those who practiced witch- 
ery with an evil intention, or to impose on credulity. Many of 
the poor wretches who were cruelly tormented and executed as 
supposed witches were the victims of wicked informers, or 
malevolent and Ignorant neighbors, or enemies. And their 
confessions were extorted from them by cruel tortures. It seems 
now marvelous that the belief in witches so long maintained 
it'^elf not only among the people, but among men of high intel- 
lectual power, a Glanville and a Henry More. Even Bentley 
defends the belief in witchcraft on the ground of the existence 
of a public law against it declaring it felony, and Dr. Samuel 
Clarke, in his Exposition of the Church Catechistn, appears to 
countenance the popular credulity. — S. 
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Discourses, or 

that in Selden's time death was the penalty for 
steahng and many other crimes. That Sel- 
den did not beHeve in witchcraft shows how 
much greater, how much more sensible, how 
much freer from superstition he was, than 
most of the eminent men of his day.] 

Wife. 

He that hath a handsome wife is by other 
men thought happy ; 'tis a pleasure to look upon 
her, and be in her company; but the husband 
is cloyed with her. We are never content with 
what we have. [No ; nor with what we have 
not. The rich man is often cloyed with his 
wealth ; but who would not be wealthy ? I 
should like to try it.] 

You shall see a monkey, some time, that has 
been playing up and down the garden, at length 
leap up to the top of the wall, but his clog hangs 
a great way below on this side. The bishop's 
wife is like that monkey's clog ; himself is got 
up very high, takes place of the temporal 
barons, but his wife comes a great way behind. 

[At the present day the reverse of this is 
often the case — the clog becomes a ladder by 
which the monkey climbs to the top of the wall ! 
His simile would apply much better to those 
successful merchants who, beginning in a 
small way, have acquired wealth and station, 
and surrounded themselves with all fine things 
— except their wives, who have remained what 
they originally were when they married them. 



Table-Talk 

Beware, O wife of a successful man, that you 
keep pace with him in intellectual as well as in 
material advancement, or he will finally be 
ashamed of you ! | 

'Tis reason a man that will have a wife 
should be at the charge of her trinkets, and 
pay all the scores she sets on him. He that will 
keep a monkey 'tis fit he should pay for the 
glasses he breaks. [This is the only defect I 
find in Selden — he had no high opinion of 
women ; he failed to discover their good quali- 
ties, or wherein they are superior to men. Yet 
his greatest benefactor was a woman ! To a 
man whose motto was, "Liberty above all 
things," wedlock was probably a dreaded 
thing.] 

Wisdom. 

A WISE man should never resolve upon any- 
thing, at least never let the world know his 
resolution ; for if he cannot arrive at it he is 
ashamed. How many things did the king re- 
solve, in his declaration concerning Scotland, 
never to do, and yet did them all ! A man must 
do according to accidents and emergencies. 

Never tell your resolution beforehand ; but 
when the cast is thrown, play it as well as you 
can, to win the game you are at. 'Tis but folly 
to study how to play size-ace when you know 
not whether you shall throw it or no. 

Wise men say nothing in dangerous times. 
The lion, you know, called the sheep to ask her 
if his breath smelt : she said, "Aye ;" he bit off 

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Discourses, or 

her head for a fool. He called the wolf and 
asked him : he said "No ;" he tore him to pieces 
for a flatterer. At last he called the fox and 
asked him: truly he had got a cold and could 
not smell. 

Wit. 

Wit and wisdom dififer ; wit is upon the sud- 
den turn, wisdom is in bringing about ends. 

Nature must be the groundwork of wit and 
art ; otherwise whatever is done will prove but 
Jack-pudding's work. 

Wit must grow like fingers. If it be taken 
from others 'tis like plums stuck upon black- 
thorns; there they are for a while, but they 
come to nothing. 

He that will give himself to all manner of 
ways to get money may be rich ; so he that lets 
fly all he knows or thinks may by chance be 
satirically witty. Honesty sometimes keeps a 
man from growing rich, and civility from being 
witty. Women ought not to know their own 
wit, because they will still be showing it, and 
so spoil it ; like a child that will continually be 
showing its fine new coat, till at length it 
bedaubs it all with its pah hands. 

Fine wits destroy themselves with their own 
plots, in meddling with great aflfairs of state. 
They commonly do as the ape that saw the 
gunner put bullets in the cannon, and was 
pleased with it, and he would be doing so too : 
at last he puts himself into the piece, and so 
both ape and bullet were shot away together. 



Table-Talk 

[What Selden says about wit is doubtless true ; 
but if wisdom cannot be acquired, why study 
anything at all? Why read even these wise 
sayings of his ? Why listen to the conversation 
of a wise man ? Why write it, or read it ? That 
is just the difference between a man of sense 
and a fool ; the former learns, the latter does 
not. Selden himself would never have been the 
wise man he was, or spoken so wisely as he did, 
had he not made himself familiar with the wit 
and wisdom of past ages.] 

Women. 

Let the women have power of their heads, 
^'because of the angels." The reason of the 
words "because of the angels" is this: The 
Greek Church held an opinion that the angels 
fell in love with women ; an opinion grounded 
upon that in Genesis vi,* ''The sons of God saw 
the daughters of men that they were fair." 
This fancy St. Paul discreetly catches, and uses 
it as an argument to persuade them to modesty. 

Men are not troubled to hear a man dis- 
praised, because they know, though he be 
naught, there's worth in others ; but women 
are mightily troubled to hear any of them 
spoken against, as if the sex itself were guilty 
of some unworthiness. 

Women and princes must both trust some- 
body ; and they are happy or unhappy accord- 

* But see also the apocryphal Book of Enoch, ch. vii, vs. 
I, 2, — S. 

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Discourses, or 

ing to the desert of those under whose hands 
they fall. If a man knows how to manage the 
favor of a lady her honor is safe, and so is a 
prince's. 

Zealots. 

One would wonder that Christ should whip 
the buyers and sellers out of the temple and 
nobody offer to resist him, considering what 
opinion they had of him. But the reason was, 
they had a law, that whosoever did profane 
sanctitatum Dei, ant tevipli, the holiness of 
God or the temple, before ten persons, 'twas 
lawful for any of them to kill him, or to do any- 
thing this side killing him, as whipping him, 
or the like. [So the buyers and sellers did 
profane the temple.] Hence it was, that when 
one struck our Saviour before the judge, where 
it was not lawful to strike (as it is not with us 
at this day), he only replies: If I have spoken 
evil, bear witness of the evil ; but if well, why 
smitest thou me? He says nothing against 
their smiting him, in case he had been guilty 
of speaking evil, that is, blasphemy, if they 
could have proved it against him. They that 
put this law into execution were called Zealots ; 
but afterward they committed many villainies. 

[What a bright light some of Selden's obser- 
vations throw on passages in the Holy Scrip- 
ture! I feel now that these wise remarks of 
this learned and able man are not merely to be 
read and then laid aside. They ought to be 
taken up from time to time and carefully con- 
214 



Table-Talk 

sidered or pondered over. And it is perhaps 
well to remind the young reader that Shake- 
speare, Milton, Bunyan, Erskine, Webster, 
Prentiss, Lincoln, and other great writers and 
speakers, were close students of the Bible, 
the great "well of English undefiled" from 
which they drew not only many of their words 
and images, but their inspiration. A writer on 
Daniel Webster, speaking of the influence of 
the Bible on him, wisely observes that ''the 
young man who would be a writer that will be 
read, or an orator that will be heard, must 
study the English Bible."] 
215 



END OF TABLE-TALK. 



Concluding Remarks 



Concluding Remarks — Closing Years 
OF Mr. Selden's Life 

"Is not this a rare fellow, my lord !" The 
reader must have perceived that there is 
much matter, much pith and sense, in the 
talk of this plain-spoken, shrewd old lawyer. 
His style of talking is what I call the style 
of a born teacher ; that way of talking which 
makes everything discussed plain to the dull- 
est apprehension. There is no misappre- 
hending his meaning; no cloudy mysticism 
about him. Who can fail to feel the force of 
his comparisons and illustrations? Deeply 
versed as he was in legal and historical lore, 
it is plain that he was familiar with life in all 
its phases ; with the motives and character of 
ordinary as well as of extraordinary men; 
and that an hour's talk with him was worth 
a year's reading of books. "Excellent !" says 
Coleridge, commenting on one of his re- 
marks. "O to have been with Selden over 
his glass of wine, making every accident an 

outlet and a vehicle of wisdom!" And then 
217 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

how much more forcible it must all have 
been when accompanied by the look, the tone, 
and the gesticulation of the old man eloquent 
himself ! 

No wonder his amanuensis thought it 
worth while to take notes of his talk — no 
wonder he felt it ought to be preserved for 
the benefit of others as well as of himself. 
For it is evident that the essence of Selden's 
life and thought was freely poured out in his 
talk ; that he expressed his mind without re- 
serve, and uttered in conversation what he 
would not have dared to express in writing. 
This is what makes it a privilege to listen to 
the talk of a great public man; you get at 
the "true inwardness" of things, and learn 
the substance of his experience, in an easy, 
pleasant way, without the inconvenience of 
ceremony. It is getting behind the scenes 
and seeing the springs of action without the 
trouble and anxiety of participating in them. 

Milward's thought was a happy one; al- 
most an inspiration ; and yet we cannot help 
regretting that he did not think it worth his 
while to take some note of the talk of Sel- 
den's guests, who must have made some good 
remarks in reply. Their very names would 
have been of much interest to us at the pres- 
ent day. Doubtless Milward thought their 
218 



Concluding Remarks 

talk less worthy of note than that of his mas- 
ter; and probably it was; but if he had only 
made some small note of it, however inferior 
it might have been, it would not only have 
served to render that of Selden a hundred- 
fold more interesting, by its connection with 
the persons mentioned, but have given it that 
dramatic interest which attaches to Johnson's 
talk, which is now almost entirely lacking in 
Selden's. 

This is all the more to be regretted, as 
we are informed that "he kept a plentiful 
table, which was never without the society of 
learned guests;" and we are naturally curi- 
ous to know who they w^ere. Was Ben Jon- 
son one of them? or Bacon? or Milton? or 
Butler? Was not Crashaw the poet there, 
he whom he had ''converted from writing 
against plays?" We know that Milton, who 
must have known him, spoke of him as "the 
chief of the learned men in this land ;" and we 
know that he had a personal acquaintance 
with Lord Bacon ; for Selden and Bacon ar- 
ranged the costumes for one of the masques 
— written by Ben Jonson and illustrated 
by Inigo Jones, — performed before the 
court of Charles the First. We know also 
that when Ben Jonson was released from 

prison a banquet was given him by his 
219 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

friends, at which both Selden and Camden 
were present. We know, too, that Butler, 
whom he had met in the library of the 
Duchess of Kent, and to whom he probably 
gave points for his great satiric poem, Hudi- 
bras, was among his friends. It is, there- 
fore, not improbable that some of these, to- 
gether with ''honest Ben," whom Selden 
speaks of as his "beloved friend," were often 
present at the table of the distinguished 
scholar and statesman. "If it were so, it 
was a grievous fault" that Milw^ard did not 
mention them; but it were also a grievous 
fault to make Milward answer too strictly 
for the omission. We must remember that 
he did not live in the nineteenth century, and 
had not the example of Boswell and others 
before his eyes. 

Selden probably never knew that at his 
hospitable table there was "a chiel amang 
them takin' notes;" and it is probable that, 
had he suspected such a thing, it would not 
have been good for the "chiel," nor for us. 
He would doubtless have regarded such a 
thing as an uncanny thing to do, especially 
at a time when free and unguarded expres- 
sions might be twisted into treason, and 
have caused him another enforced residence 
in the Towner. If he thought "wise men" 



Concluding Remarks 

should "say nothing in dangerous times," he 
certainly would not have approved of any- 
one writing down what he said in private 
conversation. 

Yet, with all his wisdom and penetration, 
with all his knowledge of men and manners, 
Selden made a greater mistake than Mil- 
ward; he failed to discover or to take any 
notice whatever of the greatest man of them 
all. Although he had probably known and 
conversed with Shakespeare; although he 
must have known something of the man and 
his works; although he had been a member 
of that famous club of wits and poets to 
which Shakespeare belonged, and was on 
familiar terms with his intimate friend Ben 
Jonson, he never once mentions or tells us a 
single thing of the immortal bard of Avon, 
nor of anyone or anything connected with 
him. Shakespeare was probably to him, as 
to others, nothing more than a ''poor 
player," who whiled away the time of the 
idle and the fashionable by dramatic ex- 
hibitions. Being merely a poet, with "little 
Latin and less Greek," he was not to be 
reckoned among the men of solid learning 
and w4de influence, who molded public opin- 
ion or shaped national policy. Ah Selden! 
Selden ! what a grievous mistake thou didst 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

make there ! how little didst thou dream that, 
among all the learned and able men whom 
thou knewest, this man, whom thou didst 
overlook and disregard, was by far the 
greatest of them all ; that this man, who had 
''little Latin and less Greek," was destined, 
by his marvelous works, to have a greater 
influence on the life and thought of the 
whole English-speaking race, now the great- 
est race in the world, than the most learned 
man of them all, or than any other man that 
ever lived ! 

The omission, however, may have been 
Milward's, and not Selden's ; for he seems to 
have allowed Selden to speak but rarely of 
persons. Indeed, we must not forget that 
his book is announced as giving "the sense 
of various matters of weight and of high 
consequence relating especially to religion 
and state;" and he probably thought it be- 
neath him to note what his master said of 
particular persons. It was the thoughts, the 
principles, the exposition of events, and the 
characterization of men and things relating 
to Church policy, that Milward thought 
most important : and, being a clergyman, he 
had probably considered it not worth while 
to note what was said of a ''poor player," 
who had written nothing but plays, had lived 

222 



Concluding Remarks 

and acted long before his time, and whose 
works had, as we know, fallen completely 
into neglect in his Puritan day. 

Of Ben Jonson himself there is nothing 
recorded, although there is a reference to one 
of his plays (see article Religion, where he 
refers to Inigo Lanthorn in Bartholomew 
Fair), which shows he was not unfamiliar 
with them. In the Preface to his Titles of 
Honor, Selden speaks of Jonson as "that 
singular Poet, Mr. Ben Jonson, whose 
special worth in literature, accurate judg- 
ment and performance, known only to that 
few which are truly able to know him, hath 
had from me, ever since I began to learn, 
an increasing admiration." What! could 
he so admire Jonson's works, and neither 
know nor care for those of Shakespeare? 
It is possible, though not probable; for if he 
had had, ever since childhood, an increasing 
admiration for Jonson as a writer, and an 
intimate acquaintance with him as a man, 
is it likely that he knew nothing of Jonson's 
friend and colleague, who had been highly 
esteemed by Jonson, and who had far out- 
shone him as a dramatic poet? Is it likely 
that Jonson had never spoken to Selden of 
the man whom he "loved this side of idola- 
try," nor mentioned to him any of his 
15 223 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

works? No, it is not likely; for Shake- 
speare was one of ''that few" who had ap- 
preciated Jonson's genius, and had helped 
him in the bringing out of his plays; and 
there is no question but the two, Selden and 
Jonson, must often h^ave spoken of "Sweet 
Will" and his marvelous productions, which 
Jonson pronounces as "not for a day, but for 
all time." 

Is it not strange that Shakespeare's con- 
temporaries, who tell us so much about other 
men of less note, should be so silent concern- 
ing the greatest of them all? Surely their 
eyes were "holden," that they could perceive 
nothing worthy of note in so great a man. 
What a lesson to many of us who are blind 
to the merits of the great souls now around 
us! 

"Through Greece, great Homer wand'ring begged his 

bread : 
Three cities claimed him as their own when dead." 

One bit of evidence, however, one small 
item of corroborative testimony, Selden 
does furnish, though unintentionally, touch- 
ing the character and motives of one who 
had something to do with Shakespeare — a 
man whose character is interesting to us 
solely on account of his attempt, in the life- 
time of the poet, to defame and depreciate 
224 



Concluding Remarks 

him as a man and poet. Thomas Nash, the 
envious httle playwright and pamphleteer 
who affected to despise Shakespeare because 
he knew "little Latin and less Greek," is 
thus referred to by Selden (p. 136) : 

"We measure the excellency of other men 
by some excellency we conceive to be in our- 
selves. Nash, a poet, poor enough (as poets 
used to be), seeing an alderman, with his 
gold chain, upon his great horse, said by way 
of scorn to one of his companions, 'Do you 
see yon fellow, how goodly, how big he 
looks? Why, that fellow cannot make a 
blank verse!' " 

Now Nash spoke pretty much in the same 
w^ay about Shakespeare — it was his charac- 
teristic form of depreciation. Here is the 
passage in which he refers to the great poet, 
who had grown rich while the little poet re- 
mained poor : 

"It is a common practice nowadays among 

a sort of shifting companions that run 

through every art and thrive by none, that 

leave the trade of Noverint [law clerk or 

notary], whereto they were born, and busy 

themselves with the endeavors of art, that 

could scarcely Latini::e their neck-verse if 

they should have need ; yet English Seneca, 

read by candlelight, yields many good sen- 
225 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

tences, such as 'Blood is a beggar/ and so 
forth; and if you entreat him on a frosty 
morning, he will afford you whole Hamlets, 
I should say handfuls, of tragical speeches."* 
Now the animus of this attack, as I have 
shown in ''Shakespeare as Portrayed by 
Himself," was simply envy at the success of 
a non-university-bred man who had sur- 
passed all others in the excellence of his work. 
Nash, who was a Cambridge-bred man, 
thought that none other than college-bred 
men should "busy themselves with the en- 
deavors of art," and was piqued to see a man 
who had never trod university halls, never 
spent seven years in the study of Greek and 
Latin, succeed so well as a poet and drama- 
tist. He was animated by that same deadly 
antipathy which causes the old-school doc- 
tors to denounce the new; for Shakespeare, 
being irregularly educated, belonged to the 
new school, and must therefore be a quack. 
How could he know, without a thorough 
knowledge of Greek and Latin, how any- 
thing artistic or poetic was to be done? In 
that age a knowledge of the "learned lan- 
guages" was the sine qiia non of education, 
and without it no author could possibly, in 

* The passage occurs in an "Epistle to the Gentlemen Students 
of both Universities " prefixed to Greene's Arcadia. 
226 



Concluding Remarks 

the opinion of many, be a good one. For- 
tunately, the common people did not think 
so; they judge by results; and this judgment 
is the best, after all. 

Now Selden's illustration of Nash's way 
of judging others confirms this view — the 
depreciation of the alderman tallies precisely 
with that of the poet. Shakespeare had not 
that ''excellency" which the little poet had 
himself, and which he thought the first quali- 
fication of one who ''busied himself with the 
endeavors of art;" and consequently he af- 
fected to despise the alderman as well as the 
poet for lack of this "excellency." It is 
pretty much as if Nash, looking at the suc- 
cessful poet as he did at the rich alderman, 
exclaimed : "Look at that fellow ! though he 
has written a score of successful plays, and 
has grown rich by his pen, he cannot indite 
a dozen lines of Latin verse!" 

Poor little Nash ! it was not thy Latin 
verse, nor thy English prose, that has kept 
thy name in remembrance; but — little didst 
thou think it ! — simply thy envious thrust at 
the fair name and successful career of thy 
immortal contemporary, whom thou couldst 
in no way resemble or imitate ! 

But the fact remains, and is worthy of 

notice, that Selden was acquainted with 
227 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

Nash, and had observed his peculiar way of 
"putting things." He had, in all probability, 
heard Nash talk in this way of Shakespeare 
too. Nash, who was a "notable railer" 
against individuals as well as against the 
vices of the time, had written on various 
lines — plays, pamphlets, poems, pasquinades 
— and though he had mixed his ink with gall 
enough, he could not "distill it into gold." 
Though he could, like many other critics, 
rail finely at the productions of others, he 
could not produce anything worthy, or of 
lasting value, himself. When Marlowe died 
Nash completed one of his tragedies ; but the 
completion is worthless ; the only part of the 
tragedy worth reading is that written by 
Marlowe. He had probably heard of the 
munificent way in which the young Earl of 
Southampton had patronized Shakespeare; 
for in one of his pamphlets, Pierce Penni- 
lesse, he declares that what he, a man of let- 
ters, wanted, was a patron, and humorously 
begs for a trial, undertaking to make it worth 
the patron's while. And he pronounces it a 
monstrous thing that "cautious, brainless 
drudges and knaves wax fat when the seven 
liberal sciences and a good leg will scarce get 
a scholar bread and cheese !" 

Poor fellow ! he had doubtless suffered, as 
228 



Concluding Remarks 

many other "demnition literary fellows" 
have suffered, for want of bread; and it is 
evident that neither Selden nor "the rest of 
mankind" had, notwithstanding his peculiar 
''excellency," a very high opinion of him or 
his writings. For, from the conclusion 
drawn by Selden, we see plainly that the 
great lawyer was not, in this matter, of the 
"poor poet's" mind. George Saintsbury, in 
his work on the Elizabethan poets, speaks of 
Nash as a "journalist born out of due time." 
Very likely; a yellozu journalist! 

Well, even for this little bit of testimony, 
this crumb of circumstantial or rhetorical 
evidence, touching the character of one of 
Shakespeare's assailants, we are grateful to 
Selden, and to Milward for recording it. 
How much less significant the passage 
would have been if Milward had merely 
said "a. certain poet," or "a poor but learn- 
ed poet?" Ah, yes; the personality of the 
speaker in such cases counts for much. But 
we shall let that pass. I shall only add that 
this bit of evidence, small as it is, is another 
nail in the coffin of that absurd, that prepos- 
terous, that idiotic theory that would make 
the busy lawyer, statesman, and utilitarian 
philosopher. Lord Bacon, the author of the 

most passionately poetic and highly imagi- 
229 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

native compositions ever conceived by the 
brain or penned by the hand of man. 

Selden's latter years were passed in easy 
circumstances and with peaceful and pleas- 
ant surroundings. Parliament had made 
him a grant of five thousand pounds (equal 
to ten times as much in our day) in consid- 
eration of his public services and unmerited 
sufferings ; and this sum, together with what 
he had saved from his earnings as a lawyer, 
enabled him to live in independent and com- 
fortable circumstances. He may be said to 
have won what poor Macbeth lamented as 
lost: 

"That whicli should accompany old age, 

As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends;" 

for he had many friends; and he became 
noted for the kindly and generous manner in 
which he entertained them, and for the 
liberal patronage which he showed toward 
men of learning and studious pursuits. In 
Parr's Life of Archbishop Usher there is a 
letter from Casaubon in which that distin- 
guished antiquary says that Selden, "after 
some intimation of his present condition and 
necessities," not only furnished him with "a 
considerable sum of money," but "was so 

free and forward in his expressions," as to 
230 



Concluding Remarks 

offer him more aid than his conscience would 
allow him to accept. 

To the last Selden loved good company 
and good cheer; he would "keep himself 
warm and moist as long as he lived;" and 
although there is no doubt that his viands 
and his wines were excellent, and his guests 
all of a superior character, we may be sure 
that, on all such occasions, the talk of the 
host himself, with his rich and varied learn- 
ing and his wide experience of men and 
affairs, afforded by far the best part of the 
entertainment. 

It is pleasant to observe that Selden kept 
his old friends to the last. Among these was 
the learned and excellent prelate, Archbishop 
Usher, whom he had befriended in the evil 
days, and who now attended him in sickness 
as well as in health. For Selden had pre- 
served the library of the archbishop from 
confiscation, and saved him from the humil- 
iation of appearing before the Puritan Board 
of Examiners at Westminster to take the 
negative oath imposed upon all those who 
had been adherents of the king. These two 
were, apparently, close friends, and no doubt 
they had much in common in their views and 
pursuits. Another of these friends w^as the 

amiable and admirable Sir Matthew Hale, 
231 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

whom Selden had befriended from his youth 
up, and whom he had appointed one of the 
executors of his will. As Sir Matthew was 
a Puritan, and Usher an Episcopalian, it 
may be inferred how broad and tolerant Sel- 
den was in his views and friendships. Both 
were men of great learning and noble char- 
acter, and that was the chief thing with 
Selden. It will be remembered that Sir 
Matthew Hale, who had not been made 
chief justice until long after Selden's death, 
was one of those to whom Milward dedi- 
cated the Table-Talk. 

Broad as were Selden's views, and wide as 
was his learning, it will readily be inferred, 
from the character of his intimate friends, 
that he did not lose his faith in the Gospel, 
or his trust in the saving power of Christ. 
Richard Baxter, the famous Nonconformist 
preacher, who was the personal friend of Sir 
Matthew Hale, makes this statement : "The 
Hobbians and other infidels would have per- 
suaded the world that Selden was of their 
mind; but Sir Matthew Hale, his intimate 
friend and executor, assured me that Selden 
was an earnest professor of the Christian 
faith, and so angry an adversary to Hobbes 
that he hath rated him out of the room." 

Archbishop Usher, too, who attended Sel- 
232 



Concluding Remarks 

den in his last illness and preached his 
funeral sermon, declared that he made to 
him a statement which, from a man of such 
vast learning, is not only significant and in- 
teresting, but strongly fortifying to the faith 
of every earnest Christian : ''That he had 
surveyed most parts of the learning that was 
among the sons of men; that he had his 
study full of books and papers on most sub- 
jects in the world ; yet at that time he could 
not recollect any passage out of those infinite 
books and manuscripts he was master of 
whereon he could rest his soul, save out of 
the holy Scriptures; wherein the most re- 
markable passage that lay upon his spirit 
was that contained in St. Paul's Epistle to 
Titus : Tor the grace of God, that bringeth 
salvation, hath appeared unto all men ; teach- 
ing us, that, denying ungodliness and world- 
ly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, 
and godly, in this present world ; looking for 
that blessed hope, and the glorious appear- 
ing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus 
Christ; who gave himself for us, that he 
might redeem us from all iniquity, and 
purify unto, himself a peculiar people, zeal- 
ous of good works.' " 

Who will say that John Selden was not a 
Christian? And such a Christian — perhaps 

22>Z 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

the most liberal of his day ; "for the grace of 
God, that bringeth salvation, hath appeared 
unto all men," such was his broad view of 
Christ's mission in the world. 

Probably few men in the profession come 
nearer to the picture of the ''good lawyer," 
so admirably drawn by Attorney-General 
Griggs in his recent discourse before the 
law students of Bowdoin College : 

"I commend to you the cultivation of a spirit that 
will enable you to take a healthy, sound, and cheer- 
ful view of the struggles and movements of society, 
of law, and of government, believing that their tend- 
ency is toward improvement, not deterioration. 
The best function of the lawyer is that of legal guid- 
ance : to show how pitfalls may be shunned and col- 
lisions avoided, and to point out the pathway that 
may be followed in peace. In law, as in medicine, 
an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. 
Litigation among clients, like war among nations, 
should be the last resort. The lawyer should be a 
peacemaker. 

"For your exemplar let me commend the ideal 
of the good lawyer. I do not say the great, but 
the good lawyer. A man of kindly and benignant 
disposition, friendly alike with his well-to-do and 
his poorer fellow-townsmen, acquainted with their 
habits and individual history, and with a pretty ac- 
curate notion of their opinions and prejudices, as 
well as of their ways and means ; genial and sociable, 
234 



Concluding Remarks 

yet dignified and self-contained, and of staid and 
comfortable appearance ; in manner alert, in conver- 
sation always moderate and respectful; shrewd in 
his observations, wise, but with perennial humor and 
love of pleasantry; as a citizen always concerned and 
active in the interests of his town, his State, and his 
country ; not an agitator nor a perpetual fault-finder, 
nor giving out the intimation that he is better or 
wiser than others, but ready to confer, to adjust, to 
agree, to get the best possible if not the utmost that 
is desirable. To him the people turn in local emer- 
gencies for guidance and counsel on their public 
affairs, even partisanship fearing not to trust to his 
honor and wisdom ; so free from all cause of offense 
that there is no tongue to say a word against his 
pure integrity ; too dignified and respectable to tempt 
familiarity ; too genial and generous to provoke envy 
or jealousy; revered by his brethren of the bar; 
helpful and kindly to the young; in manner suave 
and polite, with a fine courtliness of the old flavor 
which Clarendon described in John Hampden [would 
not the less famous name of John Selden be equally 
appropriate ?] as a flowing courtesy toward all men ; 
successful, of course, in his practice, but caring less 
for its profits than for the forensic and intellectual de- 
light which the study and practice of the law bring 
to him. . . . His mind is grounded upon the broad 
and deep principles of jurisprudence rather than upon 
' wise saws and modern instances,' but over all is re- 
flected the illumination of a strong common sense and 
a refined tactfulness. 

235 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

"In the judgment and feelings of the community 
there is something of the venerable and illustrious 
attached to his name, not for his learning in the law, 
not for his success as an advocate, not for his mere 
usefulness to his fellow-citizens as a counselor and 
guide, but for the benignant influence of his whole 
life and character; and when he dies, to every mind 
there comes a suggestion of the epitaph that shall 
most fittingly preserve the estimate which the people 
have formed of him: The Just Man — the Coun- 
selor.' " 

Although Selden passed his seventy years 

in single blessedness ; although he would not, 

like the foolish frogs, ''jump into the well," 

he passed many years in close intimacy with 

the Dowager Countess of Kent — a lady 

eminent for piety and virtue, and noted as 

the friend of art and literature — who must 

have thought a great deal of him, for at 

her death she left him property valued at 

£40,000. Aubrey indeed declares that he was 

privately married to this lady; but there is 

no documentary proof of this assertion. As 

the lady had a great deal of business on her 

hands, she doubtless found the counsel of 

such a law-learned man as Selden valuable 

to her; and as he was an excellent talker, 

and, according to Clarendon, possessed of 

"an affability and courtesy that would have 
236 



Concluding Remarks 

graced the best courts," his company was 
doubtless very agreeable to the countess. 

Mr. Singer gives us this interesting bit of 
information concerning her: "Lady Kent, 
who was one of the three daughters and co- 
heiresses of Gilbert Talbot, Earl of Shrews- 
bury, seems to have been an especial favorer 
of learning and literature; for we are told 
that Butler, the author of Hiidibras, was 
among those to whom, while living, she ex- 
tended her favors; and at her house, his 
biographer tells us, 'he had not only the op- 
portunity to consult all manner of books, but 
to converse also with that great living 
library of learning, the great Mr. Selden.' 
May we not conjecture that Butler owed 
this favor to Selden himself?" 

Probably he did ; and it is pleasant to think 
that Butler was among his friends, and that 
the two often conversed together. Here, for 
instance, Milward might have told us much 
worth knowing ; for there is very little known 
of Butler's life. Mr. Saintsbury says it was 
while residing with Lady Kent that Butler 
"met and worked for Selden." 

One thing is evident, which is that Selden, 

toward the close of his life, seems to have felt 

the force of the Scriptural injunction, "It is 

not good for man to be alone;" and en- 
237 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

deavored, by his close intimacy and sincere 
regard for the estimable countess, to repair, 
in some measure, the one mistake of his life. 
Selden left his whole fortune — except 
some small sums to his nephews and nieces 
— to four of his friends, whom he also made 
his executors. Certainly no man could say 
he was not good to his friends; for he was 
not only generous to them while living, but 
left them all he had at his death. Why he 
did not leave more to his kinsfolk, who were 
still, it seems, of low estate, is somewhat of 
a mystery; but it may be explained by the 
remark he made to Sir Bennett Hawkins, 
that he *'had nobody to make his heir, except 
it were a milkmaid, and that such people did 
not know what to do with a great estate." 
That might have been so in his day; but it 
is different in ours; ''such people" can gen- 
erally "get away" with two or three "great 
estates" nowadays. I need not mention in- 
stances; but is it not a question whether 
those who have been kind and serviceable to 
us in life be not more deserving of considera- 
tion at death than kinsfolk who have no 
other claim than their accidental relation- 
ship to us ? — people who perhaps never think 
of us twice in our lives except for what they 

may get at our death ? 
238 



Concluding Remarks 

Perhaps Selden followed the example of 
another dignitary of the day, Bishop Gros- 
tete of Lincoln, who said to his brother, in 
reply to a request that he would raise him up 
in the world: "Brother, if your plow is 
broken, I'll pay the mending of it; or if an 
ox is dead, I'll pay for another ; but a plow- 
man I found you, and a plowman I leave 
you." There is no denying the fact that it 
has often proved a dangerous and ruinous 
thing to leave a large fortune to young and 
inexperienced people, who have neither char- 
acter nor wit enough to make good use of 

it. ''Put a beggar on horseback " Well, 

the proverb is somewhat musty. One of 
those w^lio served Selden — his barber — is 
said to have declared he would fain know 
what kind of a will he made ; ''for," said he, 
"I never knew a wise man to make a wise 
will." Probably he too expected a share in 
it. There is some comfort in the thought 
that there were no lawyers at that day ready 
to prove the testator insane for making such 
a will. I do not think that any man ever 
made a will that satisfied everybody. 

Certain it is that Selden was, while living, 

neither penurious nor illiberal; for he is 

known to have been a generous patron of 

various poor scholars and antiquarians; not 
16 239 



Selden and His Table-Talk 

only aiding them in their need, but assisting 
them pecuniarily in the prosecution of their 
studies and researches. Moreover, his friends 
declare that he was hospitable and generous 
in his dealings with all men ; and we see no 
reason for questioning the propriety of the 
way in which he finally disposed of his 
property. 

His fine library, which consisted of eight 
thousand volumes, he intended leaving to 
the University of Oxford; but, taking um- 
brage at a demand for security for the safe 
return of a manuscript which he had desired 
from the Bodleian Library, he left his books 
also to his friends. The latter, considering 
that they were ''the executors of his will, not 
of his anger" — which shows what judicious 
and right-thinking men they were — finally 
transferred the books to the university, 
where, in a room by themselves, called "Mr. 
Selden's Library," they may be seen to this 
day. Here the thoughtful student or visitor 
may sit and muse, and, conjuring up the 
shade of the shrewd yet kind and benevolent 
old lawyer, observe him poring over his 
books, inditing his learned treatises, or ex- 
pounding to his friends the "true inward- 
ness" of some important event of his day, 
clinching his argument with an apt though 

240 



Concluding Remarks 

homely simile, or winding it up with "This 
is the case!" or "Sir, I tell you, no!" 

'"iiit here, and muse ! It is an antique room, 

High-roofed, with casements through whose pur- 
ple pane 
Unwilling daylight steals amidst the gloom. 

Shy as a fearful stranger. Here they reign 
(In loftier pomp than waking life had known), 

The kings of Thought ! not crowned until the 
grave. 
When Agamemnon sinks into the tomb 

The beggar Homer mounts the monarch's throne I" 

FINIS. 



241 



INDEX 



Abbeys, Founders of, 71. 

^'Esop's fable of the frogs, 176. 

Age of Shakespeare, 36. 

Aiken on Selden, 82, 97. 

Allegories, The Fathers on, 76. 

American boy, his incentives 
to study, 82. 

Ana of France and Italy, 17- 
22 ; their disappearance, 30. 

Anabaptist, 94. 

An eye for an eye, etc., 185. 

Angels, do they engage in con- 
versation, 150. 

Anglo-Saxons, their penalties, 
185. 

Arnold, Matthew, on the Puri- 
tans, 43. 

Apelles and the shoemaker, 
92. 

Apollo and the soldiers and 
butchers, 208. 

Aristotle, 197, 200. 

Assembly, 181. 

"As You Like It," Quotation 
from, 194, note. 

Athenians, their democracy, 

132, 133- 

Attorney-general, Position of, 
178. 

Aubrey, his assertion about 
Selden, 236. 

Authors and bonks, 82-86. 

Bacon, Lord, his essays, 3 ; 
associated with Selden, 38 ; 
his friends, 57 ; on books, 
86 ; on schoolmen's philoso- 
phy, 150 ; on the rack, 202 ; 
not Shakespeare, 228. 



Baptism, 72. 

Barrow on contracts, 96, note. 

Bartholomew Fair, Jonson's 

play, quoted by Selden, 190, 
Baxter, Richard, on Selden's 

faith, 232. 
Ben Jonson, friend of Selden, 

38, 222. 
Bentley, on quotable books, 

84 ; on witchcraft, 209, note. 
Bible, Translation of, 72, 73 ; 

interpretation of, 75 ; text 

from, 171 ; study of, 214, 

215 ; Selden's reliance on, 

233- 

Biography, Use of, 200. 

Bishop, Wife of, 210. 

Bishops in the Parliament, 79, 
80 ; defense of, 48. 

Bishops out of the Parliament, 
80-83 ■> i"^ the English Epis- 
copal Church, 83. 

Bishops, what hurt them, 76, 

97. 
Boccalini, Story from, 143, 

208. 
Book of songs and sonnets, 12. 
Books and authors, 82-86 ; 

Popish, 83. 
Books of the i6th and 17th 

centuries, 9-1 1 ; in a library, 

30, 31. 
Booksellers, 83. 
Boswell, James, his life of Dr. 

Johnson, 23, 26, 30, 31. 
Bowdoin College, Discourse 

before, 234. 
Boy and calf, 185. 



243 



Index 



Briggs, Dr., 74. 

Buckingham, Duke of, 52. 

Bull, The Pope's, 164. 

Buiiyan, his style, 61. 

Burton, William E., the actor, 
his books, 29. 

Butler, the poet, quotation 
from, 121 ; on Jewish vows, 
147, note ; his connection 
with Selden, 219, 220, 237. 

Caesar, Julius, and the perspec- 
tive glasses, 180. 

Casaubon, the antiquary, 
helped by Selden, 230. 

Casting out devils, 98. 

Catholics, 89, 98, 140, 164, 166. 

Ceremony toward ladies, 87. 

Changing sides, 87. 

Charles the First, his picture- 
gallery, 43 ; his conduct, 45 ; 
his punishment, 46; the mar- 
tyr, 198 ; argument against 
his policy, 205, 207, 

Chastity, vows of, 203. 

Children, their fondness for 
riddles, 13. 

Christ, his descent into hell, 
108 ; great observer of civil 
power, 167 ; suffered Judas 
to take the communion, 192 ; 
driving out buyers and sell- 
ers, 213; before the judge, 
214. 

Christians, The original, 88. 

Church of Rome, 90, 114. 

Church, The, 89, 90, 106, 168 ; 
in the United States, 123. 

Clarendon, Lord, on Selden, 

53, 54. 
Clarke, Dr. Samuel, on witch- 
craft, 209, note. 



Clergy, their faults, etc., 90, 92, 
178. 

Clergyman, A New York, his 
sermons, 62. 

Clink, the prison so called, 
141. 

Cobbett, Wm., his style, 61. 

Coleridge, the poet, on Selden's 
Table-Talk^ title-page ; on 
logic and poetry, 149, note; 
163, note ; on a remark of 
Selden's, 217. 

Communion, 192, 

Communism, Argument 
against, 137. 

Competency, different for dif- 
ferent persons, 93. 

Confession, 92, 93. 

Confessor, The king's, 92. 

Conscience, 93, 94. 

Consecration, 95. 

Contracts, 96, 206, 207. 

Cotton, Lady, on a shoe, 184 ; 
on a duchess, 199. 

Council, 97. 

Council of Trent, 189. 

Crashaw, Richard, the poet, 
159-162, 220. 

Cromwell, 32, 45, 50. 

Cross, The, on coins, 194. 

Country fellow in the play, 137, 

Curiosities of Literature, Dis- 
raeli's, 24. 

Custom, the best law of Eng- 
land, 207. 

Customs, The prince's, 198. 

Damnation, preaching, 97, 98. 

Defoe, his style, 61. 

D'Espernon, Duke of, his Gas- 
con accent, 104, note. 

Democracy in Athens, 132. 



244 



Index 



Devil, The, and the Spaniard, 

104. 
Devils, Casting out, 98, loi. 
Difference among men, 137. 
Digby, Sir Kenelm, 116, 179, 
Disraeli, Isaac, his books, 24, 25. 
Drayton, Michael, assisted by 

Selden, 38. 
Duchess of Richmond, Lady 

Cotton on, 200. 
Dutch Courtezan^ a play of 

Marston's, 205. 
Dutch literature, 84, 85. 
Early readers, 10. 
Ecclesiastics, their reading, 10, 

II. 
Eliot, Sir John, in prison, 40. 
Emperor, The German, and 

the nobles, priests, soldiers, 

and peasants, 122. 
Encouragement to scholars, 82. 
English language, 127. 
Epitaph, loi ; on church-yard 

gate, 102. 
Equity, 102. 

Erasmus, compared with Sel- 
den, 57, 75. 
Euclid, why beaten, 143. 
Evil speaking, 103. 
Experience, 132. 
Fable of the lion and the fox, 

212. 
Faith and works, 105. 
Fencing and preaching, 171. 
Fool, 1 he court, 103. 
Free will, 105. 

Friars, how they hold land, 106, 
Friends, Old, 106. 
Gay, his epitaph, 24. 
Gentleman, Definition of, 107, 

108. 



Gesta Romanorum^ 16. 

Godfathers, 72. 

Goethe, his early associates, 

36. 
Goldsmith, Quotation from, 

16 ; on old things, 106 ; as 

a schoolmaster, 141. 
Good lawyer, The, Griggs on, 

234. 

Good works, 71. 

Gosse, Mr., on Dutch litera- 
ture, 85. 

Governing, 167. 

Griggs, Attorney-General, his 
picture of the good lawyer, 

234. 

Grimstone, Sir H., his argu- 
ment, 47, 48. 

Grostete, bishop of Lincoln, 
and his brother, 239. 

Grotius, Hugo, 75, 85. 

Hale, Sir Matthew, 67, 231. 

Hall, The dining, in olden 
times, 108. 

Hallam, on Selden's Table- 
Talk^ title-page. 

Hampden, defended by Selden, 
52 ; referred to, 235. 

Harvey, or, Selden's physician, 
100. 

Heathe, Sir Robert, 120, note. 

Hell, Christ descending into, 
108, no. 

Henry the Fourth, of France, 
119. 

Henry the Fifth, seized ;^ioo,- 
000 a year, 71. 

Henry the Eighth, his law re- 
specting the reading of the 
Bible, 74. 

Herbert, Sir Edward, 97. 



245 



Index 



Heyward, Edward, Selden's 
early friend, 67, note. 

Hobbes, on witchcraft, 208, 
note; disliked by Selden, 
231. 

Holy Ghost, 97, 171. 

Homer, 224, 241. 

Honesty, Moral, 144. 

Hudibras^ 220. 

Human invention, 119. 

Humility, iii. 

Idolatry, 11 1. 

Images, Worship of, 114, 115. 

Incendiaries, 116. 

Independency, 117. 

Infancy of the human race, 11. 

Ingersoll, Colonel, his religion, 
187. 

Inigo Jones, 219. 

Inner Temple, of London, 35. 

Invincible ignorance, 114. 

Irish lords, 135. 

Irishman, his witty plea, 138. 

Irish priest on King James, 182. 

James the First on duels, 120 ; 
on peace, 155 ; and the fly, 
186 ; severe on Selden, 196 ; 
on old friends, 106. 

Jews, how they made a doctor 
of laws, 88 ; their way of 
consecration, 95 ; laws and 
character of, 112, 113; their 
vows, 147 ; their custom in 
usury, 204. 

Johnson, Dr. Samuel, his dic- 
tionary, 15 ; his biography, 
127; his opinion of the 
French Ana, 32 ; his style, 60. 

Jones, Inigo, 219. 

Jonson, Ben, friend of Selden, 
219, 223 ; a play of, 190. 



Judge, How to win the, 120. 
Judges, what they can do, 126. 
Judgments, 119. 
Juggling, 121, 144. 
Jurisdiction, 121, 
Jus divmuni, 122, 181. 
Justification by faith, 71. 
Jus praeceptivum and jus per- 

mtssivufft, 96. 
Kent, Lady, her contract with 

Sir Edward Herbert, 97 ; her 

friendship with Selden, 235 ; 

her kindness to Butler, 236. 
King, The, 123, 124 ; in olden 

times, 108 ; rebellion against, 

206, 207, See James I and 

Charles I. 
King of England, 125, 128, 206, 

207. 
King of Spain in English 

courts, 129. 
Knight, Charles, on the Ana 

of France, 19-22. 
Ladies, Ceremony toward, 87. 
Language, English, 127. 
Lanthorn, Inigo, 190. 
Latin-English sermon, 62. 
Latin secretary, 51, 
Laud, Archbishop, and court 

fool, 103, note ; and the 

preachers, 172. 
Law, 128 ; ignorance of, 129. 
Law of nature, 130. 
Lawyer, The, 178 ; the good, 

234. 
Leach, Sir John, on law of the 

land, 130, note. 
Learning, 132 ; no man wiser 

for his, 131 ; engrossed by 

Jesuits and lawyers, 132. 
Lectures, 106, 133. 



246 



Index 



Lessing, his Nathan the Wise, 

192. 
Libels (lampoons), 134. 
" Liberty above all things," 

Selden's motto, 210. 
Litnbus Jtt/antutn, 72. 
Liturgy, Necessity of a, 134, 

168; its effect, 170. 
Livings, Two or more, 185. 
Lord Mayor, his speech, 128. 
Lord of Salisbury and court 

fool, 103. 
Lords must not write verses, 

162, 163. 
Lord's Supper, Who should 

partake of, 192. 
Lords that fell from the king, 

87 ; before the Parliament, 

135 ; new lords, 135 ; Irish, 

135- 
Luther, Offer of the Pope to, 



Macaulay, his opinion of Bos- 
well, 28 ; on Johnson's talk, 
61 ; his method of reading, 
86 ; on the master passion, 
203 ; on the English consti- 
tution, 128. 

Mackintosh, Sir James, 31. 

Mahomet and Mahometry, 
167. 

Make way, 124. 

Manual, a service-book before 
Reformation, 188, 

Mare Clausum and Mare Li- 
ber um, 85. 

Marriage, 135, 136, 210. 

Marston, A play of, quoted by 
Selden, 205. 

Martial law, 205. 

Mary de Medicis, 182. 

247 



Measure in religion, 189. 

Measure of things, 136, 189. 

Mermaid Tavern Club, 37. 

Michelet, his book on priests, 
women, etc., 183. 

Milton, John, Cromwell's sec- 
retary, author of Eikono- 
klastes, 50, 51 ; on oracles, 
148; his opinion of Selden, 
218. 

Milward, Rev. Richard, 56, 57, 
67, 218, 222. 

Minister, ordination of, 137, 
138 ; how he should preach, 
139; his origin, 140; at the 
Clink, 141, 142. 

Miracle plays, 159. 

Money-getting religion, 187. 

Money, how raised by Pope 
and prince, 142, 143, 

Mortgage, 145. 

Mosely, Dr., on the Parliament, 
90. 

Nash, Thomas, on Shakes- 
peare, 136, 224, 229. 

Non-residence, 172, 185. 

Not guilty, to plead so, 128. 

Novels of fashionable life, 19. 

Number, Superstition regard- 
ing, 145- 

Oaths, 146. 

Old age, 106. 

Opinion, 149 ; charitable, 193. 

O'Powls, John, character in 
Marston's play, 203. 

Oracles, 148. 

Ordeal, Trial by, 201, 202. 

Ordinary of Newgate, 204. 

Ovid, 159. 

Oxenstiern, his famous saying, 
121. 



Index 



Oxford and Cambridge saved 

by Selden, 42, 43 ; compared, 

203. 
Painting the face, 160, 161. 
Paradise Lost, 51. 
Parliamentary religion, 166, 
Parliament, The Barebones, 43; 

Dr. Mosely on, 90 ; character 

of, 151. 
Parson, Definition of, 154. 
Patience, chief fruit of study, 

154. 
Peace, 155. 

Penance, Meaning of, 155. 
Penitence, 155. 
Pennington, Alderman, 47. 
People, Making laws for, 156, 
Perjury, not punished at one 

time, 147. 
Peter Pence, 186. 
Petition of Right, Selden on, 

52 ; Singer on, 205, note. 
Philosophy, 158. 
Picture seen in Germany, 122. 
Pictures ordered to be burnt, 

43, 44- 
Pigeon house, 94. 
Pious uses, 204. 
Pitt, the younger, his wish, 135, 
Plays, Selden on, 159. 
Pleasure, 157. 
Poetry, Selden and Coleridge 

on, 159. 
Pope of Rome, 81 ; his bull and 

brief, 164; his power, etc., 

164, 166. 
Popery, 166. 

Pope's Essay on Man, 159, note. 
Power of the State, 167. 
Prayer, 168. 
Preaching, 98, 170, 171, 172. 



Predestination, 177. 
Preferment, 177. 
Presbyters, 180. 
Prideaux, Dr., on predestina- 
tion, 177. 
Priest, in confession, 93 ; the 

English, 169. 
Priests of Rome, 182. 
Princes, how they settle religion, 

190 ; are also tradesmen, 198; 

taking up arms against, 206 ; 

and women, 213. 
Prophecies, 183. 
Proverbs, 183. 
Public interest, 118. 
Puritans, Severe doctrines of, 

loi ; their view of allegiance, 

105. 
Question, how propounded, 

183. 
Rack, used in England, 201. 
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 37. 
Reading, Methods of, 86. 
Reason, how men use it, 184. 
Religion and morality, 144. 
Religion, Selden's views on, 

186-192. 
Reporting conversations, 23. 
Residency and non-residency, 

172, 185. 
Retaliation, an eye for an eye, 

etc., 185. 
Reverence, Unreasonable, 185. 
Richelieu and the Duke, 104, 

note. 
Roger Williams, 193. 
Russell, Lord John, on proverbs, 

183. 
Sabbath, 192. 
Sacrament, 192,* 199. 
Sailor, his prayer, 104. 



248 



Index 



Saint Nicholas, worship of his 
image, 114, 115. 

Saint Paul, on women, 212, 
213. 

Saintsbury, George, on Thomas 
Nash, 229 ; on Butler, 237. 

Salvation. 193. 

Sanhedrim, 168. 

Saracens, how pictured, 205. 

Scaliger, Joseph Justus, book 
about him, 18. 

Scholars, Discouragement to, 
82. 

Schoolmasters in England, 140. 

Schoolmen, their discussions, 
150, 184. 

Scrutamini Sc7-ipturaSy 74. 

Selden, John, his Table-Talk, 
3. 4. 5, 31. 32, 57 ; memoirs 
of, 32 ; period in which he 
lived, 33 ; his schooling, 35 ; 
his early associates, 36-38 ; 
how he distinguished him- 
self, 39 ; in Parliament, 39 ; 
in prison, 40 ; conduct as a 
legislator, 40, 41 ; his mod- 
eration, 42 ; his influence in 
preventing spoliation of pub- 
lic property and institutions, 
43 ; the course he followed, 
44; conduct toward the 
clergy, 46 ; how he answered 
the radicals, 47, 48 ; his in- 
fluence in the synod of di- 
vines and laymen, 48, 49 ; 
saves loyal friends, 50; would 
not answer the Eikon Ba- 
stlike, 50; compared to Eras- 
mus, 51 ; prosecutor of 
Buckingham and defender of 
Hampden, 52 ; as a writer 

249 



and talker, 53,59; appointed 
keeper of the records, 54 ; re- 
tirement from political life, 
55 ; his works, 57; compared 
with Dr. Johnson, 60; 
friendly to the discipline of 
Church of England, 82 ; on 
books and authors, 84 ; on 
clergy and laity, 90-92 ; on 
the Puritans, loi ; on the 
schoolmen, 150; on heretics, 
151 ; his cheerful view of 
life, 158 ; his conversion of 
Crashaw and others, 159; 
his defense of the drama, 
159, 160 ; not a Puritan, 170; 
a great observer of men, 179; 
his views on ship money, 
195 ; his arraignment before 
the High Commission, 197 ; 
his ill treatment by King 
James, 196 ; his condemna- 
tion of the rack, 201, 202 ; 
on witchcraft, 208 ; his low 
estimate of women, 209, 210 ; 
his style of talking, 217 ; his 
guests, 219 ; his amanuen- 
sis, 220; his failure to take 
notice of Shakespeare, 221 ; 
his admiration of Ben Jon- 
son, 223 ; his observation of 
Nash, 224, 225 ; his latter 
years, 230 ; his faith in the 
Gospel, 231, 232 ; his recom- 
pense by Parliament, 230 ; 
his death, 55, 232; his inti- 
macy with the Countess of 
Kent, 236; how he left his 
fortune, 238 ; his liberality, 
240; his will, and how he 
disposed of his library, 240. 



Index 



Self-denial, loi. 

Shakespeare, Wm., Quotation 
from, 12 ; his plots, i6, 17 ; 
age of, 36 ; no mention of, 
38 ; his conversation, 57 ; his 
reading of translations, 85 ; 
on the Puritans, loi ; stu- 
dent of the Bible, 215 ; Sel- 
den's failure to notice, 221 ; 
failure of contemporaries to 
notice, 224; Nash's attack on, 
224-229. 

Ship money, 195. 

Slender and Mistress Anne 
Page, 12. 

Spaniard and his confessor, 
104. 

Spanish War, 132, 155. 

Speech of English commander 
at Cadiz, 176. 

Spurgeon, Rev. Mr., 86. 

State, The, all povi^erful, 81 ; 
the troubled, 193. 

Stuarts, The, liberty under, 
197, 198. 

Study, Fruits of, 154. 

Sumner, Senator, his argu- 
ment, 126. 

Superstition, 194. 

Swift, Dean, his influence, 53 ; 
his position at Moor Park, 
141. 

Table Talk, Books of, 29, 30 ; 
Selden's, 57, 58. 

Taylor, Bishop, on heresy, 

151- 
Temples and churches, 95. 
Tennyson, Lord, 163. 
Thanksgiving after victories, 

195. 
Theological questions, 63. 



Tithes, 196; Selden's History 

of, 196, 197. 
Tobacco, 158. 

Tradesmen and princes, 198. 
Tradition, 198. 
Traitor, 199. 
Translations, 84, 85. 
Transubstantiation, 199. 
Trevelyan on Macaulay's talk, 

20. 
Trials, Different kinds of, 200. 
Turks, their heaven and hell, 

88. 
Truth, hov^r to find it, 200. 
Twelve Tables, laws of, 156. 
University, 202 ; graduates 

from, 203. 
Usher, Archbishop, 38, 50, 76, 

231. 
Usury, 204. 

Verse, Coleridge on, 159, note. 
Verse-making, 162, 163. 
Virgin Mary in the Old Testa- 
ment, 80, note. 
Vows, among the Jews, 147 ; 

of chastity, 203. 
Walpole, Horace, 23, 24. 
Walpoliana, 23, 24. 
War, Civil, 155 ; Spanish, 132, 

155- 
Webster, Daniel, on the an- 
cestors of Americans, 33; 

influence of the Bible on, 

215. 
Wedlock, Selden's aversion to, 

210. 
Whitelock, the historian, on 

Selden, 49. 
Wife, A handsome, 209 ; of a 

successful man, 210. 
Wisdom, 131, 211, 212. 



250 



Index 



Wit and wisdom, born with a 
man, 131, 179, 212. 

Witches and witchcraft, 208, 
209. 

Wolf, John, his big book, 13, 
14. 

Women, Selden's estimate of, 
209 ; wit of, 212 ; sensitive- 
ness of, 212, 213. 



Works and faith, 105. 

Wotton, Sir Henry, his defini- 
tion of an ambassador, 121 ; 
his clever reply to a priest, 
189. 

Wynne, Dr., his work on li- 
braries, 29. 

Zealots, 213, 214. 



251 



OCT ^^ ^S99 



